


my heart is in the trees (don't let it fall)

by pmonkey816



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bureaucrat Clarke, F/F, Field Scientist Lexa, Pining, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2018-04-08 07:17:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 58,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4295598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pmonkey816/pseuds/pmonkey816
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Lexa thinks she should be over this by now. After all, it was her decision to end their relationship, to choose her friends and family and career in Seattle over a life in DC with Clarke. But being here, with Clarke so close, is sending her careening so far off-kilter she doesn't even feel like she's standing anymore. Being this close to Clarke now feels like tumbling head over foot down an eternal hill, and she hates it. Hates Clarke, in a way, for being alluring despite smelling like an entire drugstore's worth of scented bath products and perfumes, for being beautiful despite the gray pencil skirt/blazer combination that is so utterly boring it's like she's trying to advertise she's a bureaucrat. Like she's morphed with that terrible material they make cubicle walls out of and she wants the world to know it. But christ, Clarke must be some sort of sick addiction for her because she still wants—craves—with a reckless lack of control that pricks goosebumps into her skin."</p><p>a "what the heck kind of au" set in academia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. we meet again

Lexa Woods does not believe in fate, destiny, or everything happening for a reason. She doesn't believe in any sort of mystical being that guides and controls the universe with an invisible hand. As far as she can tell, the world is a chaotic, messy place where things just _happen;_ a puzzle with a million pieces, each one from a different box.The human brain, in an attempt to keep itself from completely paralyzing with fear, makes a gestalt of the random little pieces that coincidentally happen to connect, and pats you on the shoulder with a half-hearted 'hang in there, kiddo.' We see supernatural forces so that we can continue to make choices, continue to go about our lives.

 

No,  Lexa doesn't believe in god, but she can see how other people could have moments where they feel personally victimized by the guy.  For example, even at the tender age of t hirty , t here is a whole litany of people from her past she'd rather not run into, but any of them—really,  _even her asshole father_ _risen from the grave_ _—_ is preferable to the one chatting with her  and her coworkers  like it's the most natural thing in the world .

 

She doesn't even want to be at this stupid conference. She  _hates_ conferences and Indra knows it and  she could be outside right now, sitting in the branch of a tree  with the wind tousling her hair around her cheeks if Indra hadn't forced her to  come , and now Clarke Griffin is here and absolutely nothing is okay.  How could she be okay when there's a speaking, breathing, smiling (god, that smile can  _still_ make Lexa melt) reminder of the hardest decision she's ever made in her life?

 

She tries to swallow down the acrid fumes of bile burning in the back of her throat and her sinuses, tries to keep standing without it being obvious her knees are threatening to buckle any minute. Clarke hasn't even looked at her once, and she thinks that's probably for the best because there's about a ninety-five percent chance she would either start crying or say something bitter and cutting and mean that would make Clarke give her that look of hers—the one that's part-irritation and part-amusement and all _don't fuck with me, Woods_. So instead, she watches over the rim of a shitty, watered-down hotel bar gin and tonic and watches Lincoln talk to Clarke like there's absolutely nothing wrong and pretending with all she has that the last words Clarke had said to her before today were not “please don't do this.”

 

She's doomed to fail, of course, especially when Lincoln frowns down at his phone and politely excuses himself from the conversation, leaving just her, Clarke, and Anya. Who, jarred from her wistful, longing staring at the plate full of cocktail wieners she didn't have a free hand to eat, was now arching an amused eyebrow at Lexa and looking slowly between her and Clarke, her sharp brown eyes searing an accusation straight into Lexa's soul.

 

Anya shifts the way she always does when she's about to speak, widening her stance and lifting her chin in a way that stills the air around her and vacuums all focus to her. Lexa tightens her grip on the glass in her hand and meets Anya's eye with as much humility as she can muster to beg her to run interference.

 

“Nope,” is all she says before turning on her heel and walking to settle alone at a table.

 

Lexa realizes after a couple seconds of watching Anya stuff conference buffet food into her mouth (which, _gross_ ) that she's not coming back and now she has two options:

 

1\. Cut her losses and walk away.

 

2\. Talk to Clarke.

 

She clears her throat. Clarke looks at her with expectation and no small amount of mockery, and Lexa realizes she's made a terrible mistake in thinking Clarke would be anything past silent toward her. They haven't seen each other in four years, but she knows Clarke, and holding grudges is something she does exceptionally well. Like the time the two of them had gotten into a fight about the ethics of mandatory minimum sentences and Clarke made a dig at her about it every time they talked for a month. Or the time Octavia had borrowed her favorite shoes and drunkenly lost one during the walk home and Clarke wouldn't talk to her until she replaced them. And then there was her former best friend Wells, who had done something so bad everyone simply referred to it as “The Incident.” It occurred in Clarke's Junior year of high school, and she didn't talk to him once in the course of Lexa's five-year relationship with her.

 

Comparatively, it doesn't seem all that far-fetched that she could hang on to breakup-level anger for a few years. She aborts mission Talk to Clarke and swiftly turns to join Anya at the table before she can fuck this up any worse than she already has.

 

“You're walking away from me again?” Clarke's voice is defiant, with just the slightest trembling undercurrent, and Lexa's heart breaks at the sound because all she hears is the echo of p _lease don't do this_. She hadn't expected Clarke to care enough to stop her, and now she's thrown wildly off balance. She shouldn't feel guilty because she did nothing wrong, but it's there anyway—heavy and thick and suffocating. She stills, her mind struggling to catch up with the situation despite feeling like she's just taken something hard and blunt to the stomach. When she doesn't respond, Clarke speaks again. “Well, at least you have the guts to do it in person this time.”

 

Lexa turns, forcing her face impassive, tempering the self-righteousness that flares hot just under her skin. “I was under the impression you did not want to see me.”

 

“Right. This is my fault. Good to see you haven't matured at all.” She snaps back and shit, Lexa had forgotten just how good Clarke always is at riling her up.

 

She balls her fists at her side and takes a step closer to hopefully bring the volume down and keep Clarke from making a spectacle of them in front of their colleagues. “I am simply trying to respect your wishes.”

 

“Maybe try asking what I want next time.” Clarke isn't missing a single beat, each comeback quick as a shot and infinitely more painful.

 

Lexa thinks she should be over this by now. After all, it was her decision to end their relationship, to choose her friends and family and career in Seattle over a life in DC with Clarke. But being here, with Clarke so close, is sending her careening so far off-kilter she doesn't even feel like she's standing anymore. Being this close to Clarke now feels like tumbling head over foot down an eternal hill, and she hates it. Hates Clarke, in a way, for being alluring despite smelling like an entire drugstore's worth of scented bath products and perfumes, for being beautiful despite the gray pencil skirt/blazer combination that is so utterly boring it's like she's trying to advertise she's a bureaucrat. Like she's morphed with that terrible material they make cubicle walls out of and she wants the world to know it. But _christ_ , Clarke must be some sort of sick addiction for her because she still wants—craves—with a reckless lack of control that pricks goosebumps into her skin.

 

“Okay.” She takes another step forward, to try to catch the scent of Clarke's skin under all the products. It's entirely subconscious at first, but Lexa enjoys the little hitch in Clarke's breath when they get near enough for the heat of their bodies to mingle and amplify, so she leans in just that little bit more. “What do you want me to do, Clarke?”

 

She wonders if the phrase sends harsh currents of pleasure skittering across Clarke's skin, too, if she's also remembering Lexa on her knees in front of her, lips wet where she'd intentionally licked them to make them shine for Clarke the way she liked. If the tight set of her jaw and the dilation of her pupils is any indication, Clarke's about three seconds away from either grabbing her by the hair and kissing her or crumpling her heart to dust.

 

Clarke's always been a bit of a wildcard that way.

 

Clarke flounders for a moment, lips parting slightly then shutting again, and her eyes flicker from one of Lexa's eyes to the other, then down briefly to her lips where they linger for just a few moments. She seems to catch herself and jolts them back up to her eyes. What Lexa doesn't expect is for Clarke to take a deep breath, swallow thickly, and let her breath back out with a measured control.

  
What she really doesn't expect is for Clarke to say, “we should talk. Somewhere more private.” Lexa raises a haughty eyebrow and Clarke rolls her eyes in exasperation. “ _Just_ talk, Lexa.”

 

She nods, though the disappointment she feels at that is... unsettling. She knows, she _knows_ hooking up with Clarke would be quite possibly the worst decision she could possibly make in this situation, but there's a large part of her that's really not interested in logic and reason right now. She knows Clarke well enough to trust she won't actually end up killing her and strategically dumping her body, and that talking through whatever volatile mixture of attraction and repulsion is going on between them is wise, but despite how hard she tries to quell it, that flicker of want won't extinguish completely. It burns an aching hole in her chest that she thinks must be visible to anyone who looks hard enough.

  
Clarke turns to walk away and Lexa chugs down the rest of her drink and leaves it on an empty table before following blindly behind her. It takes a few minutes, but eventually she notices that they're heading to the elevator. Which means Clarke is taking her to her room. For someone who doesn't believe in god, she's found the presence of Clarke Griffin makes her take his name in vain quite a bit. The elevator doors open and they climb inside, standing awkwardly in front of two gray-haired professors, one of which is literally wearing a dark green blazer with an actual patch on the elbow, who Lexa remembers presenting on increasing numbers of forest fires in temperate rainforests and their effects on the local flora. She thinks maybe she should say something about it, pretend her life is normal just _be cool/act natural/you got this_ but that would require turning around and potentially having a conversation that's stilted and cut too short and she's already feeling sufficiently uncomfortable right now, thank you very much.

 

The doors ping open and the elevator's occupants squeeze between them to make their way out, mumbling hurried apologies as they go. Once the doors are closed again, Clarke sighs and leans back against the elevator wall. Her eyes slide shut and her head tips back. She swallows, and it gives Lexa the perfect opportunity to watch the constricting of her neck muscles, the ridges of her throat. She wishes Clarke wasn't dressed so professionally right now, because she wants to see her collarbones, wants to trace them with gentle fingertips and make Clarke squirm under her touch the way she used to because, as Clarke would say when she was feeling particularly impatient, “you fuck like Fabio.”

 

It's not long before Clarke's swiping her card in the hotel room door and they're making their way inside the suite (suite? Really? Pencil pushing pays, apparently). Clarke's back is turned to her as she fills a couple tumblers, the clink and glug of ice and whiskey the only sound between them. The whiskey is a nice one, she can tell from the squeak of the cork that caps it again, and she suddenly feels like she's nowhere near enough for Clarke now. Like they're completely different people from who'd they'd been five years ago—Clarke the bureaucrat and Lexa the field scientist. And yet...

 

There's a warmth here that does not belong: when Clarke turns and their fingers brush when she offers Lexa one of the glasses, when Clarke leans back against the counter and glances up at Lexa from under her lashes and the smallest smile dances on the corner of her lips. It all feels terribly familiar, so much like home. Maybe the gin and tonic she'd drained when Clarke had led her away from the bar had been stronger than she'd thought. That must be it.

 

Clarke runs her finger gently along the rim of the glass, fidgeting in the way she only ever does when she's nervous and doesn't know how to collect herself. “I'm sorry for snapping at you.”

 

Clarke is always surprising her, is never easy to understand. She has changed in a great many ways, sure, but that will always remain. It's what she loved about Clarke, her passion and conviction; the way it always came first and held strong. Which tended to mean apologies were few and far between.

 

“I won't apologize for our breakup.” Lexa says, sure that Clarke's admission is her way of opening up the dialogue. She has always been better at talking than Lexa has, and she's used it to her advantage more times than Lexa can count.

 

Clarke sighs and turns to rest her hands on the counter. She shakes her head slowly form where it hangs between hunched shoulders. Just barely manages to work out words through clenched teeth. “That's not what this is about, Lexa.”

 

Lexa wants to step forward, to wrap her arms around Clarke's waist and press her face into her neck. She wants to surround Clarke, be surrounded by her, recapture that warmth she'd felt earlier, the one that made her feel like she was twenty-t hree and coming home to the woman she love s again.  She restrains herself, though, because she's not—they're not, haven't been in so long. She wonders if they somehow became friends if it would  ever go away: that impulse to touch, to comfort, to confide in ways that friends don't. She wonders if she'll ever stop thinking about kissing her again.

 

“Then what is it about?” She's stepping on eggshells now, and she's pretty sure she's not going to like whatever answer comes out of Clarke's mouth now. But it seems like there's something on the tip of Clarke's tongue that just won't come out without a little urging, and Lexa learned after countless times of simply allowing Clarke her silence and space that she likes being asked.

 

“I—” She turns and catches Lexa's eye, and her breath, the words she was about to speak, catch in her throat and she breathes out a self-deprecating laugh. “Damn it.” She reaches up to undo the bun her hair is pulled into then runs both of her hands through it. Somehow, it makes her look more like Clarke when she was Lexa's, and it sends an uncomfortable note ripping through her. “It's about us.”

 

Lexa swallows, anticipation rising like vomit in her throat. “Us.”

 

Clarke nods and crosses her arms over her chest. “Yeah.” She takes a deep breath and presses on. “Do you remember the  F CDI? Your site applied for it last year.”

 

Lexa's brow furrows and she shrugs. “Yes, the  F orest  Conservation ...something... Initiative?” She mutters the words out, trying hard to remember when Indra had briefed her on it. Grants and money were really not her expertise.

 

“The Forest Conservation Demonstration Initiative. I've been asked to administer the Olympic site.” She rushes the words out quickly, and it takes Lexa a minute to realize what she's saying.

  
The Olympic site. The Olympic National Forest.  _The place where Lexa works_ . Well, shit.

 

“So, you're going to be my boss.”

 

“No, not your boss. Not exactly. I'll just be there to watch, make sure everything runs smoothly and is an appropriate use of grant funds. I'll only be around the first six months, and then it'll be weekly skype meetings and then you'll only see me bimonthly.” She hasn't stopped rambling yet, which is just fine with Lexa because she's not really listening anyway. Clarke seems to notice this because she takes a tentative step forward, and raises a hand to Lexa's bicep. “Hey. Look, it'll be fine. I'm—I'm over what happened between us, you know? I have a boyfriend now and I love him and I'm happy and there's no reason this has to be weird. I mean, we cared about each other once, right?”

 

Lexa nods. She did care about Clarke. Tonight has made it painfully obvious she still does. She nods again. “Right.”

 

Clarke smiles shyly, looking up at Lexa from under her eyelashes, and that sense of home is less a burn, less a comfort now, and more an ache. “I'm really glad to hear that, Lexa. It's not official yet, though, so don't tell anyone?” Her tone tells Lexa it's more a request and less a command. She nods again and Clarke raises her glass out toward her. “To new beginnings.”

 

Lexa clinks hers against Clarke's and drains it. A new beginning. She can do that.  



	2. mix cd's are so 2006

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for being sweet to me and giving me compliments and whatnot. like everyone else on this site, i enjoy me some compliments. also, i'm a virgo so give me all the compliments and i promise i'll blush a whole lot and it'll be cute. i hope you still like this chapter. we'll get more into lexa's actual life outside of the conference in probably the next chapter. let me know what you think! also the formatting when i move things over from libreoffice is weird so if there are any glaring formatting errors, tell me about them so i can fix it please n thanks
> 
> also, sidenote, can you believe the phrase "turn of the century" now refers to the 2000s? it's been fucking with my head so hard lately.

Lexa and Clarke as a couple goes one way—a lot of talking with little communicating, blonde waves of hair and eyes that blur the border between green and gray in the light of a room filled with candles, gentle touches that soothe away the aches of two people growing in tandem but not reliance—but Clarke and Lexa now goes like this: Lexa can't stop staring at Clarke's lips and Clarke can't stop staring at the ground.

 

It's awkward for a minute, the pulse of _what could have been_ lying heavy and soggy and twitching between them. Lexa thinks she'll implode from the pressure, from the thickness, but Clarke seems uncomfortable in the way one does on a first date with a terrible person when you can't find the right excuse to leave.Though even that seems familiar, their first kiss had really only been the lucky coalescence of a hundred different moments that led to Clarke's hand laying atop Lexa's and halting her racing mind. She's getting too bogged down in history, so Lexa thinks she should go and says so. Clarke grasps her by the arm, cheeks sunken just a little where she's biting down on them, and asks her not to leave. Normally, this wouldn't sway her but there's something pleading in Clarke's eyes that Lexa has never been able to say no to.

 

Except once.

 

_Please don't do this._

 

“I want to give you something.” Clarke says and disappears past the suite's kitchenette into the bedroom space where she tugs a suitcase from the depths of the closet. Lexa follows to stand beside the (terribly ugly and overly-lush) couch and Clarke continues speaking. “Do you remember our four month anniversary date?”

 

“You mean our four month Not Anniversary Not Date? Because we were definitely Not Dating and you definitely didn't like me?” Lexa snorts out the words, the tinge of bitterness running rampant now that it is no longer sweetened and cut by the taste of Clarke's lips on hers.

 

Clarke pauses and sighs and shifts her weight from one leg to the other, but doesn't turn to face Lexa. Lexa can't decide if that's a good thing or not, because she's still reeling from just being here, her brain chanting some variation of _what the fuck are you doing_ on repeat in her mind. For the life of her, she can't come up with an answer that's anywhere near satisfactory.

 

“Yeah, that.” Clarke turns now, and though Lexa doesn't see it she knows there was an eye roll for her somewhere in the past ten seconds. She wants to linger on that thought, the way she still thinks she knows Clarke despite the years between them (does she really have any right to think that way?), but her attention is stolen by a small, thin plastic case held delicately in Clarke's hands. “Do you remember it?”

 

Lexa tangles her hands together in front of her because yes, of course she remembers it. It had been a fight just to get Clarke to let Lexa take her somewhere that wasn't either of their houses, and even then she had insisted it be far away from the University. She had only relented when Lexa had picked a little hole in the wall in Beacon Hill where she was unlikely to run into any acquaintances. In a lot of ways it was their second date, in many others the first real one. It was their first date that wasn't marked by sarcasm and eye rolls and endless arguments. Though to be fair, Clarke hadn't believed in moral relativism when Lexa had met her and that was just criminal.

 

“Yes, quite well. We went to the Thali House, you spent the entire evening looking like you'd rather be anywhere than out in public with me, and then I drove you home.”

 

Clarke takes a few steps to stand in front of Lexa, eyes still on the case in her hands as she taps it without rhythm against her hand. “Then you kissed me good night,” Clarke catches Lexa's eye and the tenderness returns, halts the havoc of her thoughts for a moment. It frightens Lexa to think little has changed between them. That a look can still disarm her so completely. “And I tried to drag you inside, because I thought that sex was all I wanted from you. Like, if I had to endure dinner with you then I deserved a reward.” Clarke chuckles dryly and licks nervously at her lips, her eyes flickering from the case in her hands to Lexa's eyes and back. “But you wouldn't. Instead, you gave me this CD and told me to call you after I'd listened to it.”

 

Clarke is holding Lexa's gaze now, and Lexa can feel the slightest of tremors in her legs and arms—feels like she's been holding the heaviest weight for so long it's turning her body absolutely useless and sloppy. Lexa is anything but sloppy, and she resents the betrayal of her body and hopes Clarke is as unobservant as she's ever been because she needs that to work for her instead of against her at least once in her life.

 

“The mix CD.” Lexa sucks her lips into her mouth and tries her best to fight the sudden uptick in her heart rate and the flush of heat across her face. Clarke may be acting nice, but Lexa knows better than to think all is somehow magically forgiven, and she knows showing weakness and sincerity in front of her will only lead her somewhere she really doesn't want to go. She looks down to her shoes before she lets her lips slip back out from between her teeth. “I forgot about that.”

 

“Yeah, the mix CD.” Clarke agrees, with an odd line to her lips that quirks up in one corner and down in the other. “Raven and I sat down to listen to it and make fun of you that night, but the more I listened, the harder it was. I started getting this feeling—” Clarke's hand came up to rest over her stomach, just above her belly button, “like I was gonna throw up, this swirling in my stomach. I didn't understand what it was until the last song came on.” Lexa tilts her head to the side a little in her thoughtfulness, tries to remember what song it could've been. “The one that went: 'I think I'm a little bit, little bit, a little bit in love with you. But only if you're a little bit, little bit, in lo-lo-lo-lo-love with me.'”

 

Clarke's voice is scratchy and a little off-key, but Lexa can't find it in her to care all that much, it still softens the hardened parts of her that feel indestructible around anyone else.

 

“Oh.” Lexa is suddenly feeling too warm everywhere and she presses a hand (which somehow manages to be cool in comparison to the rest of her) to the back of her neck and swallows down the anticipation of whatever Clarke is leading her to. She remembers it all well—too well. Remembers sitting in her room and listening to that song and daydreaming of Clarke's hands, her laugh, the secret part of Clarke she wanted to believe no one else got to see. She remembers the moment she realized the haphazard promise of just sex was no longer an option. She remembers the nights where she or Clarke stood and dressed and she wanted nothing more than to stay, to beg Clarke to just lay in her arms for a little while longer. She remembers pulling away from their kiss and handing the CD to Clarke with a heart beating its way clean through her ribcage and hands slippery and warm with sweat.

 

“I realized that maybe I loved you a little, too, that day.” Clarke is looking down at the CD, but Lexa can see the moistness in those eyes, the flare of her nostrils. She can hear the air conditioner whirring in the background, but the air in the room feels heavy and still and stale anyway. “I didn't stand a chance after that.”

 

Lexa thinks she should respond, but what could she possibly say? The only thing she can think is that she'd never stood a chance against Clarke, that Clarke had felt utterly inevitable in a way Lexa didn't believe was possible. The lines between work and romance and friends and acquaintances and income and want and need are blurring into something unrecognizable and tangled and _messy_ and she isn't sure if saying what she wants to say will help untangle it or set the whole damn thing on fire. So she grinds her teeth and steels her expression as best she can. There's a slight furrow to her brow that she can feel, and the press of her lips together is too tight to be anything but strained, but it'll have to do for now.

 

“Anyway, after you left me I went to see a therapist. He told me I should write you a letter with all of my disappointments and hopes and dreams for our future and then burn it with any keepsakes I had that were bringing me pain.”

 

Lexa's heart breaks again. There is a band pulled tight around her throat and around her chest, and it is squeezed too tight. She is a black hole, a vacuum in which there are no things that can exist but nothingness. That is the only way she can explain the feeling that rips through her in that moment. “You went to a therapist because of me?” The words are a little choked but mostly solid, and she's almost thankful to her father for teaching her how to be stoic in the face of an emotional shitstorm. Almost.

 

“Yeah. Well, kind of? He says he thinks I had such a strong reaction because my dad's death was so sudden, and you were this person that was really close to me that up and left me without warning or reason, and that all just drudged up these abandonment issues I didn't actually realize I had.” She waves a hand—as breezily dismissive as her tone—and shakes her head. “Anyway, that's not important. The reason I mention it is because this was the only thing of yours I couldn't destroy or throw away. I moved twice since you left me, and each time I couldn't quite bring myself to get rid of it.” She holds the case out to Lexa, who reaches forward to take it with shaking hands. “When I used to listen to this, it felt like you'd given me your heart. Now that I've moved on, I realized maybe the best thing to do would be to give it back to you.”

  
Lexa turns the case over in her hand and looks down at the CD, plain and gray but for the words written on it in thick black sharpie. They're faded and smudged and damn near indistinct, but she remembers writing them so well she can still make it out. FOR CLARKE. She can see the signs of years of wear and tear on the rest of the surface too, scratches catching the light like faded scars and making streaks of color like veins and yeah, she can kind of see it—the way this is her heart. But Clarke has it partly wrong. She had never given Clarke her entire heart, would never give it to anyone. Instead, she'd given Clarke a piece of it. A piece that had never been meant for anyone but her, a piece Clarke would have whether she kept the CD or not, whether they became friends or never spoke again. Clarke had made an impact on her, had left her mark, had given Lexa piece of herself in exchange for a piece of Lexa, and it had been beautiful. And now it is over, and Lexa holds the only physical remnants in her hands.

 

From a life filled with warmth and joy and so many colors that weren't black she hadn't yet realized she liked to a beat up old CD.

 

It makes Lexa feels stupid. She feels stupid because there are entire poetry books she's written in her mind about the minutiae of Clarke Griffin that she wants to recite for her. Because when Lexa's mouth is closed, she can find the words to tell Clarke she wishes she could have given her the world, that she wishes everything could have been different. But her tongue is always too thick, too lazy, her lips clumsy and ungainly and the thoughts can never quite move past them. And there will always be that unspoken promise to Anya to never tell a truth that doesn't belong to her, so she swallows down the desire to explain and nods again. It's probably for the best, anyway, not to push these things with Clarke.

 

“Thank you.” She catches Clarke's eye and feels an actual pulse of something that feels like pain throb between them before they both cast their eyes aside. It's unlike anything she had ever experienced before she met Clarke and she has absolutely hated it—these shared swells of emotion that are raw and sore and bleeding—ever since. Like the pure power of Clarke's feelings could spill over into her. Like even though Lexa went through her life feeling almost nothing but occasional minor annoyances and victories, just one look from Clarke could tap into some secret place inside of her where her soul lived. “If it's all right with you, I'm going to pretend you didn't tell me you mocked my gift with Raven.”

 

It's a bad joke, but it's offered with a small smile—an olive branch Clarke readily accepts with one of her own. “We wouldn't have teased you about it if you weren't such a dork, Lexa. You made it too easy. I mean, _you gave me_ a _mix CD for our anniversary_.”

 

Lexa's smile grows, morphs into a smirk at the edges. “If I recall correctly, you used to like that I was a dork.”

  
Clarke shrugs and glances nonchalantly down at her fingernails. “It was tolerable.” Lexa rolls her eyes but before she can respond, Clarke continues. “Although, if _I_ recall correctly, you used to like it when I teased you.”

 

Which, okay, for starters—FOR STARTERS—that is not even a fair thing to say to anybody you are not attempting to take to your bed (or kitchenette counter or couch or floor) imminently, and also, that statement brings up images with it and well, wow. _Wow. Okay._ Also also, Lexa is pretty sure they had been about ten seconds of silence away from a group cry, and now Clarke was _flirting with her_ and she still will never understand this woman.

 

Lexa clears her throat and shifts to the other foot and waits for some sort of hurried apology from Clarke, some quick explanation of how it tumbled out before she could stop it and she didn't really mean it. She realizes quickly it's not going to happen and chances a look up to Clarke's face. She's smirking with her eyebrows raised in an expression that indicates she's exceedingly pleased with herself for making Lexa squirm. She forces her face calm and tilts her chin up the way she does when her Introduction to Forestry students are irritating her and she needs them to cower.

 

“That's odd, I seem to remember thinking you spent a lot of time talking about what you were going to do and not a whole lot of time actually acting on those promises.”

 

Clarke shakes her head and her lips tense awkwardly from trying to stem the smile that is budding on them. There's something in her eyes, a flash of mischief that sends Lexa's pulse throbbing out of control from the tips of her toes to her ears. She hums out a little note that lets Lexa know she's not agreeing and raises an eyebrow. When she speaks, her voice comes out quiet and low and intense. “I think we both know I did plenty of incredible, terrible things to you, Lexa. I just made you really want them before I gave them to you.” Lexa balks; tenses and stills like Clarke had just touched her, had just kissed her breathless from five feet away. “We were never perfect, but sex was the one thing we were always good at.”

 

Lexa isn't really sure what's happening. That is the only truth she can actually hold right now. This encounter with Clarke that, by all accounts, should have been horribly tense and clipped and downright uncomfortable had taken a turn into territory that she _really_ hadn't expected, and hadn't Clarke just told her their breakup had fucked her up so badly she'd needed to go to a therapist? Wait, more than that, hadn't Clarke said something about being in love with a boyfriend?

 

She clears her throat again, re-tilts her chin, tries to regain some sort of footing and leverage and basic dignity. Her voice (when she finally finds it) comes out strained and too formal. “Yes, I suppose you are right.” She raises the CD in her hand until it catches Clarke's attention and continues. “Thank you for this. I will see you tomorrow, I am sure.”

 

She doesn't even wait for Clarke's response before she turns and walks out as briskly as she can without outright running to the door. Fuck suites, seriously. They're so _large._ She hears Clarke call “good night, Lexa” just as the door clicks shut behind her.

 

She hurries down the hallway as quickly as she's able to, only partly because they're still filled with people that—god forbid—might want to _talk_ to her about something right now. Something she couldn't think about because there was a melody echoing in her head that wouldn't go away. She finds herself humming it under her breath despite being fairly sure it's making her look at least slightly out of her mind.

 

 _Hands down I'm too proud for love. But with eyes shut it's you I'm thinking of. But how we move from A to B? It can't be up to me cause you don't know. Eye to eye, thigh to thigh, I let go._  
  
I think I'm...

 

“You were with Sunshine for a while.”

 

Anya's voice is the first thing Lexa is aware of when she shoves open the door to their shared room. Anya is laid out on one of the full beds—boots and all—watching some TV show that looks downright awful in every sense of the word. Lincoln's in the cramped little makeshift living room in front of the door, stretching a sheet across the final corner of the mattress he had pulled out of the couch before she returned and generally minding his own business (he's good at that. Lexa appreciates that about him).

 

“Did you fuck her?”

 

Lincoln freezes momentarily at Anya's question and the sheet slips from his fingers and snaps half off the bed. Anya lets out a roar of a laugh, and Lexa just rolls her eyes and moves into the main part of the room where the beds are.

 

“Of course not, Anya.” She drops the CD into her dresser drawer to deal with later (she really, really can't think about it right now) then steadies herself with a hand against the furniture to toe her shoes off. “We just talked.”

 

“Yeah. Sure you did.”

 

Lexa leans down and strips her socks, then turns away to take off her shirt and bra. They've all spent enough time out in the woods together that a little nudity hardly ever worries the three of them anymore. There are no walls in the forest, and if it were up to them, that's the only place they would ever be. “Why are you pushing this, anyway? You and Clarke always hated each other.” She pulls a ribbed tank top over her head and takes the opportunity of being appropriately clothed to turn around and get a good, long look at Anya. “Or did you forget about the time the two of you got into an actual, roll-around-on-the-ground fistfight where she broke your nose?”

 

“Nope, didn't forget.” Anya brings her hands up to lace behind her head, elbows stretched out wide.

 

“Then why do you _want_ me to hook up with her?”

 

She shrugs. “She broke my nose. Girl's got a mean jab. I can respect that.”

 

Lexa groans and shakes her head, moving to pull her sweatpants on. “You are the weirdest person I've ever met.”

  
“Lincoln!” Anya shouts out of nowhere, and Lincoln's head appears around the little half-wall that separates the two 'rooms.' “Give us some privacy.” When he just stares at her for a second, she waves her hand toward the door. “Are you waiting for something? Go.”

 

“I'm in my pajamas, Anya.”

 

“So you'll come back with a girlfriend.” She pauses in faux thoughtfulness to tap a finger against her chin. “Actually, that might be a good thing, I can get rid of both of you at once.” Her face steels and now she points to the door. “Now g _o._ ”

 

He frowns down at his bare chest and legs—at the Spongebob boxers he's wearing (is he twelve? Come on)—then turns to Lexa who lets out a little sigh and decides to jump to his rescue. He is her graduate student after all, and he's put up with more than his fair share of Anya's inappropriate antics, but Lexa just wishes he was a little less of a pushover. Make no mistake, there are a lot of ways in which Lexa appreciates how tender-hearted he is, how he can balance sensitivity and strength in a way that's never come easily for her. On top of that, he's good at what he does, knowledgeable and quick on his feet. He's an asset to their program in more ways than one, really. It's just that sometimes she feels like both of their mothers.

 

She purses her lips and turns to her mentor. “Anya, be nice.” Then, to her student, “Lincoln, you don't have to go anywhere.”

 

He breathes out a little sigh of relief that Lexa actually finds oddly sweet (and damn it, Clarke must be wearing off on her already because Lexa Woods doesn't find things _sweet_ ) and he turns to head back to his bed. But Anya doesn't ever let anything go, so she pipes up again.

 

“Fine. The bathroom, then. Lexa and I need to have a little girl chat.”

 

Lincoln pauses and looks over to Lexa and yeah, Lexa likes the power inherent in his willingness to please her at least a little bit. She sighs and nods to him. “Just for a minute, Lincoln, I promise.”

 

And he's all puppy in that moment, looking like he's been banished to the kennel, but he goes anyway. He flicks the light on and the fan starts blowing. Once Anya mutes the TV and tosses the remote onto the bed, she speaks. “I'm only going to ask you this once.” Lexa catches Anya's eye, and there's something soft there she almost never sees that gives her pause. “Are you all right?”

 

Well, that's... not at all what she expected. “Yes, Anya, I'm fine.”

 

Anya just stares at her for a second, unabashed in the way she studies her face, then she shrugs a shoulder and turns the sound back on the TV. There's a couple moments of silence where Lexa goes to settle in the bed on the other side of the room.

 

“Twenty dollars says he stays in there for at least an hour.” Anya says finally, still not turning to look at Lexa though there's a hint of a smile on her face.

  
“That's mean, Anya.” She says, but she's laughing anyway. “He's a good guy.” Anya frowns, her jaw clenches and there's a flicker of a memory in Lexa's chest that makes her grin. “One hour.” She finally relents. “No more.”

 

“Deal.”


	3. separated at last

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey friends. IT'S MY BIRTHDAY. and my gift to myself is finally getting another chapter of this up. this one's sort of an in-between, but after this we'll jump forward in time a little. my other clexa story is finished now, so this one's updates will be more regular. hope you enjoy!

“Who even holds a conservation conference in the desert, anyway?” Anya snaps, interrupting Lexa once again as she does her best to read the paragraph she's been on for about twenty minutes now. Trying to read in between Anya's annoyed, deceptively breezy comments is more difficult than it ever has been, crammed as they are in seats with less than a half an inch between them.

 

She does her best to mentally hold her place long enough to respond, doesn't lift her eyes from the text. “It was an environmental conference. The desert is an environment.”

 

“A _stupid_ one.” Anya mutters, shifting her body away from Lexa to turn her pout out the window.

 

Lexa slowly lowers the book, letting the spine rest on her thigh and rolls her eyes to the upper tier of the Earth's atmosphere in a silent prayer for mercy. She sucks in a deep breath as she waits to see if it will be answered. The plane continues to soar through the sky without so much as a tremor. She lets out the sigh she'd been holding and shifts her hand so the book falls shut on her thumb. She turns her attention fully to where Anya is currently maxing out her sulk meter.

 

“Anya, it was barely a delay. It's fine.”

 

Anya doesn't look over from where she's staring out the window or even acknowledge what Lexa said; in fact, she seems to sink even deeper into whatever full-blown anxiety spiral she's somehow managed to get sucked into and Lexa really, really doesn't have the patience for this. All she really, really has the patience for is getting through the next 217 pages of this book before the plane touches the ground again. It's her only time for pleasure reading, and Anya is bulldozing right through it whining about something she has no control over.

 

She loves Anya, of course, despite the fact that she's one of the worst people Lexa has ever met. She has an almost-constant bad attitude and a penchant for drinking too much and getting into fights, but for whatever reason, Lexa has never questioned her decision to stick by her side. Anya softens for Lexa—only for her and Tris. She's still the same person, after all, that found a stick thin and starving Lexa fighting off some boys under the overpass and came to her rescue, the same person who sat with her and shared her candy bar with Lexa. Actually, Anya is one of two people alive on Earth right now that has standing permission to touch Lexa without asking (not that she uses the privilege very often, but occasionally when she's very, very drunk she gets handsy).

 

“Okay. Fine.” The guilt has reached its boiling point and she tucks the book into the mesh pocket on the back of the seat in front of her before turning more fully to Anya. “What's going on?”

 

Anya's shoulders tightening is the only visible sign that she's heard or is going to respond. Lexa does her best to wait patiently and not think about the book she's reading, the one sitting right there—so fucking close, seriously—the 'PO' in the title cut off by the pocket in such a way that Lexa swears it's making puppy dog eyes at her. Shit, who is she kidding? She's the one staring at that book right now with more longing and affection than she's given most of the people she dates.

 

“We were only delayed by a few hours, we'll be home before you know it.” She says, and she thinks maybe she should reach out a comforting hand—do _something_ to let Anya know she's there for her. But her hand remains stubbornly by her side, her heart pounding in her chest. She's never been good at this—comforting others, dealing with their emotions. She lives in the world of facts, of what can be controlled and what can't. Anya is usually her compass in that respect, the one that keeps her bearing on true north when emotions threaten to cloud her mind.

 

A snapped, “I know that” is all Anya replies with. She takes a deep breath and lets it out through her nose and Lexa is lost.

 

She waits a few moments to see if Anya will respond and when she doesn't Lexa reaches over to return to her book. She flips it open, but no matter how much she wills herself to read the next sentence, she finds herself having to go over itagain and again and again. She can't seem to absorb the meaning of the words. Her thoughts won't focus on the page, won't give her the satisfaction of fiction. There is a crisis right beside her; she can sense Anya's ill-ease like it's coming from her own gut, though she can't for the life of her decide what should be done about it.

 

“We'll be home soon.” Anya mutters before she reaches forward and pulls out a Sky Mall catalog to start flipping aimlessly through.

 

“Yeah.”

  

* * *

 

 

The second Clarke powers her phone back on, it starts whistling like a misogynistic construction worker. Text after text pops up, and it's surprising because, really, she's nice and she's cute but she's not _that_ popular. Everyone around her is watching, annoyed and impressed in equal turns, and she quickly moves to silence it, a blush burning in her cheeks. She keeps her head ducked down and checks it, seeing that, of course, they are all from one person—Raven Reyes. She heaves out a little sigh and opens the app.

 

**Raven Reyes**

_Clarke, what the hell_

 

_I just talked to Bell and he told me you ran into The Bitch Who Shall Not Be Named_

 

_Clarke._

 

_What. The. Hell._

_  
Call me as soon as you land_

 

_Are you there yet? You should be back by now_

 

_The website says you had a delay and you'll be landing at 4:13, I expect a call by 4:20_

 

_It's 4:15, Clarke_

 

_4:20, I'm waiting_

 

_I don't like to wait_

 

Clarke figures her phone will just start whistling again if she doesn't call in the next few seconds, so she presses the call button and shoves her phone between her shoulder and her ear even as she shuffles out of her row and into the aisle. Raven picks up just as she's attempting to reach up and pull her suitcase down.

  
“CLARKE, WHY WOULD YOU NOT TELL ME ABOUT THIS SOONER.”

 

She rolls her eyes, signaling her thanks to the man behind her who had helped her pull her bag down from the overhead bin when it almost fell on her. He nods politely (though impatiently) back, and she turns to head down the aisle toward the doors.

 

“Hey Raven, my flight was fine, thanks. I watched like twenty TED talks, and they even gave me complimentary pretzels. Did you know they're doing that again?”

 

“Right, right. How are you, bet the conference was fun, did you get a t-shirt? How's your mom? WHY DID YOU NOT TELL ME YOU RAN INTO THE BITCH WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED?”

 

Clarke sighs, knowing she has no chance of winning a battle with Raven and waves goodbye to the flight attendant with her phone hand, which is... really awkward, actually. Why didn't she just smile or mouth goodbye or something? Christ, she's tired.

 

“Because it wasn't a big deal. We ran into each other, said hey, I told her we're going to be working together in the future and we agreed to be adults about it. Simple. Oh, and don't use the word bitch, you know I don't like it.”

 

“Simple.” Raven deadpans back, completely ignoring the second part of Clarke's response. Not that Clarke would expect Raven to be deterred from focusing on the information she wants. “You and Lexa are never simple, Clarke, and you know it.”

 

“It's not like we're gonna be having candlelit dinners or getting drinks together. It's just work. Meetings, paperwork, boring stuff. All we have to do is smile politely, talk about money, and leave.”

 

“Mmm-hmm.” Raven is unamused and absolutely unimpressed by that answer, Clarke can tell by the flatness in her voice. “What she did was the Lexa equivalent of leaving you at the altar, and then after—how long has it been? Five years? After five years, you're just gonna see each other forty hours a week for six months, no big deal, right?”

 

Clarke steps onto the tram that will take her to the main concourse and leans back against the wall, letting go of the hand on her suitcase to wrap it around the pole. She thinks about what Raven said. She hadn't really thought about it quite that far yet, to be honest. She will be spending a great deal of time in the same city as her, and the only people she'd have the opportunity to befriend (aside from Raven, of course, who still lives in Seattle) are people Lexa works with. But that could be fine, right? They could be... friends. The thought is distasteful, but surely she can get past that.

 

“Exactly, it's been five years. I've moved on and hopefully she has, too.” It takes a lot for Clarke's mind not to stick too long on that point. She hadn't asked—the thought hadn't really occurred to her until that moment, honestly—if Lexa was seeing anyone, she had just presumed she wasn't. She doesn't like the little clench in her stomach at the thought of someone else hanging on her arm. She tells herself it's just residual anger from the way things ended and doesn't linger.

 

Raven sighs, and it's almost a cession, almost a surrender. Almost, but not quite. “Whatever you say, Clarke.” Her voice is low and sad and resigned in a way Clarke hasn't heard in ages. Since the phone call when Clarke had had to tell her she was dating Finn. “Just be careful, all right?”

 

She pauses her steps, slowing to a stop in front of the empty luggage carousel. Raven's hesitance is planting a seed of terror in her stomach, one she finds incredibly difficult to shake. “There's no need, I'm over it.”

 

“Okay.”

* * *

  It's midnight before they reach Sienne's house. The lights are out, though the late hour doesn't seem to deter the group of teenagers gathered under the street light out front. They maneuver to cover the 40s in their hands when Lexa pulls up—hunch their shoulders protectively as if it'll hide the bottles of stolen Colt 45s and cigarettes. Lexa eases her car into the driveway and Anya's pulling open the car door before she can even bring it to a full stop.

 

She jerks forward and chases after her, catching up on the first step up to the porch and grasping Anya's elbow to slow her down. “Hey, wait up.”

 

Anya's eyes flicker impatiently from the hand on her arm to the door, but she still slows and lets Lexa walk beside her to the door. It's Tris who answers—in an old Misfits t-shirt (which Lexa finds utterly puzzling, given the fact she's sure Tris has never listened to them in her life) and sweatpants with a sleepy Zoran behind her, rubbing his eyes in a petulant attempt to stay awake.

 

“Hey, Mama. Auntie L.”

 

Anya smiles—the only times she ever does are for Tris, though the girl rarely reciprocates them—and pulls her daughter into a hug. “I missed you.” She breathes the words into Tris' hair so softly Lexa almost doesn't catch them.

 

They still haven't parted when Oasis appears in the doorway with a dopey smile on his face. “Hey there. We were just watching Alice in Wonderland. Care to join?”

 

Lexa shakes her head on Anya's behalf and offers him a small smile. “No, thanks. My bed is calling.”

 

He nods and leans against the doorway. “Can't say I blame you.” He grunts. “Our days of partying until the sun comes up are long gone, huh?”

 

Lexa chuckles just as Anya finally lets Tris out of her embrace. “The only all-nighters I pull these days are when I have a publication deadline.”

 

He smiles the lopsided smile that had endeared Lexa to him in the first place and crosses his arms over his chest in a self-comforting gesture. “Can't say I envy you, Lex, but I sure am proud of you.”

 

Her eyes flicker to the ground, a flush of an odd mixture of white hot embarrassment and pride overtaking her neck and cheeks in an instant. “Gee. Thanks, Dad.”

 

“Shut up and go home.” He shoves at her shoulder, then lands his hand on the top of Tris' head, just like he used to when she was a toddler. “See you later, kid. Be good.”

 

Tris rolls her eyes. “I'm always good.”

 

“Of course you are.”

 

Anya and Lexa say their good nights to Zoran and Oasis (Sienne apparently crashed hours ago) and the three of them pile into the car. It isn't long until, after a short and silent car ride, they're parked in front of Anya's apartment building.

 

Tris lets out a little scoff. “Here? Why can't we go back to Auntie L's house?”

 

Lexa sees Anya tense beside her, and knows nothing good can come of letting her respond first. She speaks before Anya has the chance to. “This is your house now, Tris. You know that. It's been almost a year.”

 

Tris crosses her arms over her chest and leans back into Lexa's leather seats, showing no signs of leaving anytime soon. “I don't wanna live in the ghetto anymore, L. Why can't I stay with you again?”

 

“Because I'm your mother, Tristan, not Lexa.”

 

Shit. Whenever Anya is angry enough to use someone's full, legal name, nothing good can come of it.

 

“Then why did I live with her for the past five years?” Tris snaps back, and the car falls silent. Lexa is stuck between the two of them: Anya, still as a corpse with her quiet brand of rage burning in her eyes, and Tris, equally as stubborn and with double the hormones to boot.

 

“Do you want to know something special about this part of town?” Lexa blurts before she can think better of it, and it's stupid because she never offers her heart up like this for anyone but the two women in the car with her. Even then, the gift is scarcely given and rarely appreciated. “I fell in love walking with someone in this part of town.” Both Tris and Anya are eyeing her like the statement is some sort of deception, but maybe her recent encounter with Clarke has softened her because Lexa pushes on. “Do you remember Clarke? The person I dated for a long time when you were a kiddo?”

 

Tris nods uncertainly, her gaze flickering from Lexa to Anya and back. “I think so.”

 

“I lived here at the time, and she lived in the University district.” She swallowed down the nervous tickle in the back of her throat, tightened her hand on the steering wheel to calm the shiver in her hands. “She came to see me and we decided to go for a walk.” She loses herself momentarily in the details: the overwhelming smell of sex in her apartment, the shower they took together, the rumbling of their stomachs all leading to the murkiness of the sky, the drizzle of the misting rain on her face, the way Clarke's hand kept grazing the back of her own—almost like they were drawn to each other, despite both of their resistance to the idea. The way the decaying beauty of this neighborhood she'd grown to love was outshadowed by the vividness of Clarke, disinterested though she seemed to be. “While we were out, I ducked into a store to buy some food, and when I came out, she showed me a small garden patch someone had started in an abandoned lot next door. We hopped the fence and I told her all about the plants there.” She looked over to find Tris watching her with barely concealed confusion and wariness, as though the whole story was a trick. “She thought the garden was the most wonderful thing she'd ever seen, and I thought shehad the most amazingly poetic soul if she could find beauty in nature, even here.” She lets her eyes fall shut and lays her head sideways against the rest. “It's an amazing quality in a person, don't you think?”

  
When she opens her eyes, Tris is staring back at her with an ambivalence in her dark eyes (so much like Anya's) that makes Lexa hold her breath. “Yeah.” She says. There's another pause, then she haphazardly shrugs a shoulder and looks out the window. “Whatever. Let's just go to bed.” She pushes the door open and gets out and Anya shoots a short, appreciative look Lexa's way. Lexa nods in return, and then the door slams and she's overcome with the saturating feeling of being alone.

 

It isn't until she's home and showered that she digs the CD case out of her bag, opens it, and sets it in her laptop's drive.

 

* * *

 

 

Clarke pushes her door open, met with darkness tinged with the promising glow of light in the distance. “Hello?”

 

It's morning—so early she wouldn't even usually be up at this time for work, and she wonders what the light is doing on. Finn is a writer--the kind of person that can work all evening with a glass of whiskey at his side and not wake up until noon the next day—and there's no reason he should be up now. She told him not to wait up for her. She drops her shoulder bag to the floor and trudges in a bit farther, following the scent of coffee to her kitchen. And Finn is there, indeed, in a worn black T-shirt and his boxer briefs, leaning against the counter with a mug in one hand and his phone in the other. He lights up when he sees her.

 

“You're home.”

She's a little annoyed that he didn't listen to her, but mostly her heart swells in gladness. She really had missed him. She had spent at least a few minutes every day talking with him in one way or another, but it wasn't nearly enough. She practically rushes to him, lets him take her in his arms and press his lips to hers in an exaggeratedly excited kiss—the kind that people give each other after months or years apart, not days. After a few moments of kisses that stay cooled by their shared exhaustion, they pull away to rest their foreheads together.

 

“Missed you.” He mutters, though she can tell he's already half asleep.

 

She laughs. “Did you stay up all night waiting for me? I told you to get some sleep.” Still, she tucks her fingers into the collar of his shirt and pulls him closer.

 

“You know I can't sleep without you.” He mutters the words lazily against her cheek, making her laugh again—from both the sentiment and the tickle of his breath on her skin.

 

“Bullshit, we both travel all the time.” She pecks him on the lips. “But I appreciate it.”

 

He hums and kisses her chastely again, before they settle into a comfortable, prolonged embrace. Lexa tugs on her mind, somewhere in the back of it. A familiar sort of feeling, the sort that would prompt someone to tell her the reason is that Lexa's thinking of her, 2,500 miles away, edging in on her consciousness. She pushes the thought aside, though it remains: _do I tell him?_ He nuzzles into her neck, mumbles so softly she can't make out his words.

 

“What?”

“I said, can we go to bed now?”

 

She nods, follows numbly behind him toward their bedroom, but there's something off now. There's something... different about the hallway, the apartment. Something strange about the way his hand fits into hers. It's not upsetting, just... unsettling, maybe? She can't quite put words to it. He sits on the edge of the bed and pulls his shirt and socks off, tossing them in the direction of the hamper (and missing) before lying down fully on the bed.

 

She swallows, hands shaking as they rise to pull off her blazer and unbutton her top. She can't stop seeing the shift in Lexa's eyes when Clarke had flirted with her, the change from green to gray, from _her_ Lexa— warm and pliant and loving— to the one she gave to the world, the one that was hard and cold and calculated. It had been comforting, in the oddest of ways, to have her near, for it all to be so familiar. To know she could still affect Lexa. At the same time, it had been nothing short of horrifying to know Lexa could do the same to her. Except no, Clarke holds all the cards. She's in charge of the grant, she has moved on, she has every right to be angry. She is angry. She _is_.

 

“You coming?” Finn asks, not moving from where he lies on the bed, not bothering to even open his eyes. Clarke will be there, steady as always. Fine as always. Clarke is always there.

 

“Yeah, of course.” She says, voice hoarse as she pushes her pants down her legs and crawls naked into bed beside him. Cuddles into his chest. She does her best to make her mind blank, to lose herself in Finn's warmth and the salty smell of his skin and to shut her thoughts about Lexa out of her mind, to not think of her until she absolutely has to again. “Finn?”

 

He lets out another low, sleep-laced but contented little hum. “Yeah, babe?”

 

“I love you.”

 

He presses a sweet kiss into her hair and tugs her that much closer. “Love you, too.” Then, within the matter of a minute, his breathing evens out and he's fast asleep.


	4. it's the in-betweens (the spaces that separate)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, everyone. here to say thank you for the comments, of course, but also to give you a little heads up about some ableist comments in this chapter. it's just... it's canon. no one is safe. just wait til i get to bellamy cause i have feelings about how he's a 24-year old who sleeps with a ton of folks under the age of 18 and NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE.
> 
> ahem. anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter!

Clarke hates this bar. Which is a terrible coincidence because it happens to be Finn's friends' favorite and therefore, she has to endure it fairly regularly. They come here and grin conspiratorially over their tallboys; about the sticky floors and wooden walls, the tables that look like they've been sitting in this very spot since the day they were manufactured in the 70s. To marvel at the cheap beers and the grizzled old men—beards graying or stubble thick and rough and ever-present—that drink them. To revel in the country music—the kind they only like if it's at least twenty-five years old, because they surely wouldn't be caught dead listening to country otherwise. They come here to feel like they're a part of something real. That's the word they use for this place: “real”. Like they're indulging in some authentic way of life that doesn't exist anymore, like they're visiting a zoo or one of those old-world recreations they always make you go to on field trips in Elementary school.

 

The funny thing is, she thinks Lexa would love it. She fits in here along with these people, with the deep cracks and permanent callouses on her hands from years of climbing trees and doing things the hard way, and the cool silence in which she takes in the world. She probably wouldn't talk to anyone, but she probably wouldn't need to. She'd end up the favorite regular without even having to try. Lexa has always been like that: able to command a room without even opening her mouth. She even thinks she might like it more if Lexa were here, holding her hand under the table and leaning in closer than necessary to explain the rules of the football game on the screen to her.

 

The funniest part about this whole line of thought, though, is that Lexa would never bring Clarke to a bar she'd hate. She heaves out a sigh and shifts her weight in her chair, moving her chin from her left hand to her right.

 

“Hey, you okay?” Finn asks, leaning in close so he doesn't interrupt his friends' conversation about whatever book has captured their attention for the moment. She's sure it's something post-modern and near-insufferable, and she isn't even attempting to keep up with them.

 

“Yeah, just tired. Long day at work.” She says, offering up the best smile she can muster.

 

It's not entirely untrue. They had announced the grant today, which meant it was official and she could tell everybody about it. But for some reason, she hadn't been able to find the right moment to tell Finn. Nothing is going to happen, it isn't a big deal, but she knows it will be a _thing_ when she tells him and she doesn't want to deal with a thing right now. She wants a nice, quiet night.

 

Well, hang on. Back up. She's not being entirely fair to Finn. He's not a bad guy, it's not like he'd forced her to come here. He lets her make her own decisions and she likes that about him. And he doesn't really like this bar either, as far as she can tell. He'd grown up in places like this, coming with his father after a day on the construction crew since he turned thirteen and started tagging along. He's not some privileged rich kid; he's not like her or the people he surrounds himself with in that respect. But he tries—so hard—to distance himself from that past that he almost ends up being worse than them. And also, Clarke doesn't really like bars in general, so it's not really anyone's fault at all.

  
He gives her hand a light squeeze and lets himself be absorbed back into the conversation, pacified by her flimsy excuse.

 

With her free hand, she pulls out her phone and is scrolling through her facebook feed (nothing but fitspo and weird, esoteric articles nobody but the person who posted them will enjoy—mostly Raven on that end, of course) when she has an idea that seems brilliant to her. She should look up Lexa. Because she wants to see what her life is like (purely research, definitely) and partially because, well, she's drunk and it seems like a good idea. Don't question it, okay?

 

Her profile picture is the only thing Clarke can see, and it's simple—her in a harness, on a tree limb next to the man Clarke had met at the conference, both of them looking straight at the camera. Lincoln's giving a wide grin and a thumbs up, but Lexa's just leaning against the trunk with that subtle smirk on her face that Clarke has always found irresistible. It... does things to her. Brings back memories of Lexa being contrary just because she could. Because she was willing to give up control, to be held down and made to beg but she couldn't help but make Clarke work for it. She wants to see more—has this uncontrollable urge to know everything—and she clicks the “add friend” button before she really has a chance to think her actions through.

 

It's better than drunk texting your ex, though, right?

 

\--------------------

 

“You knew about this.” Anya says, storming into Lexa's office without preamble and sending her door slamming into the wall it's hinged on.

 

Lexa's glad that she isn't with a student because that would make the whole damn thing awkward and weird and she'd have to clean up another one of Anya's graceless messes. But no students have shown up to her office hours, so she looks up casually from the report in front of her and raises an eyebrow.

 

“Of course, I know everything.”

 

Anya is not amused, but that hardly deters Lexa from making her work for whatever the hell it is she's carrying on about.

 

“Cut it out, Lexa, I'm serious.”

 

“Well, you're gonna have to be a bit more specific, then, because I have no idea what you're talking about.” She knows she sounds as exasperated as she feels, and normally that would be something that bothers her, this tilting of her cards. But this is Anya—the person who knows her better than anyone in the world, the person who she can trust with her darkest truths.

 

“Clarke's administering the FCDI.”

 

“Yes.” She drops her pen and runs the hand through her hair, wincing as it catches on a particularly messy tangle. “I'm surprised you know what that is.”

 

“I said _cut the crap_ , Lexa.”

 

Lexa sighs and rolls her shoulders back and folds her hands on her lap and resigns herself to getting no work done for the next little while. “Okay, yes. I knew she was administering the grant. She told me at the conference and asked me not to tell anyone until it was official. Why does it matter?”

 

Anya turns and starts pacing restlessly from one end of the small room to the other, bouncing from one bookshelf to the next. “Because it's Clarke.” She says as if it's the most obvious thing in the world and Lexa is just playing dumb about the whole thing.

 

“Yes.” Lexa replies, trying to remain patient despite the fact that Anya—for all her blunt straightforwardness—can never just get to the damn point when it comes to her feelings. “So?”

 

“So, you two dated. For a long time.”

 

Lexa sighs yet again and brings a hand up to rub at the bridge of her nose. “Yes, Anya. We dated. Why is that important?”

 

Anya just stares at her like she's missing the giant elephant doing lines and headbanging in the corner. Her jaw clamps shut and grinds _hard_. So hard Lexa feels a little thrill of empathetic discomfort through her own molars. “If she hurts you, I'll kill her.”

 

“Anya.” Lexa's words fail her, and she pushes herself to a stand and walks around to lean against the other side of the desk. “You know I appreciate everything you did for me when we were kids. You taught me how to survive in a world that usually felt like it was trying to kill me. But I'm a big kid now, okay?” She moves her head to try to catch Anya's downcast gaze, easing up when she finds it. “I can take care of myself. I told you I was fine, and I meant it.”

 

Anya stares at her for a couple seconds, her brown eyes roiling in upheaval before she releases her tight grip on her own arms and looks off to the bookshelf. “Fine. Just promise me you won't do anything stupid.”

 

“You're one to talk.”

 

“ _Alexandria Woods._ ” Anya snaps.

 

Lexa just rolls her eyes and goes to sit back at her desk. This was all easier to manage than she'd expected, honestly. No need to push it any further and accidentally make it worse. “I promise not to do anything stupid. I'll be an angel, okay?”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Oh, and Anya?”

 

Anya pauses in the doorway and raises an irritated eyebrow.

 

“That's Dr. Woods to you.”

 

Anya rolls her eyes and throws the nearest thing she can find—which happens to be a book and _goddamnit_ it's an expensive one, too—before muttering, “shut the fuck up, _doctor._ ” And slamming the door behind her.

 

\------------------------------

 

It's a beautiful evening, one of those nights where Seattle's fading summers and burgeoning autumns live up to their reputation. The sun is setting, sending lavender and pink shooting hot and stunning through the skyline, scoring the creeping darkness with splashes of bright colors and silhouetting the tall, thin conifers and their asymmetrical tufts of branches dark against the skyline. It's still reasonably warm out—Lexa's put an old hoodie on over her tank top but aside from that she's worn pretty much the same outfit all day—and she's enjoying the near-quiet of it all. It's almost easy to forget she lives in a city in this part of town, far from the freeway and the main streets with nothing but the distant rumble of the occasional car engine to remind her. A wind breezes past, chilling her bare legs and sending a flutter of pine needles and maple seeds across her patio.

There's a bang near where the fence faces the street and she reaches out a hand for the shovel nearby and waits. Burglaries aren't particularly common in this part of town, but a person can never be too careful, And also, maybe she's a little frustrated. Maybe the idea of hitting something with a hard, blunt object sounds kind of nice right now. A small, pale hand grasps the top of the fence and the wood groans under the strain of the person's weight. She stands and places her other hand on the shovel, ready to bring it up in a muscled swing to someone's face. Only if necessary, of course.

But then the person is over the fence and dropping gracefully to the ground and the shape of her, the way she moves, is so familiar Lexa knows she can't get away with hitting her. Too bad. Lexa sighs and leans the shovel back up against the wall. “I thought I told you to stop doing that."

 

Sienne's grin is wide and not sorry in the least. “And I thought I told you to start answering your door.”

 

Lexa just drops back into the chair, Sienne taking the one across from her. “Please.” Lexa deadpans, rolling her eyes. “Make yourself comfortable.”

 

“Don't mind if I do.” Sienne leans forward and snags a plum from the bowl on the table, rubbing it on her shirt before taking a hearty bite. Juice runs down her chin and she wipes it away with the sleeve of her sweater. “So, what's got you all mopey?”

 

“I'm not mopey.” Lexa grumbles in return, pulling the bowl back and out of Sienne's reach. She has plans for those plums, damn it, and those plans are for them to end up in jars, not Sienne's stomach.

 

“That's not what Anya says.” She tosses the pit off to the side and finally settles her flighty gaze on Lexa. “She says you've been moping and you won't talk to her about it.”

 

“Not saying something's bothering me, but if it were, could you blame me for not talking to Anya about it? She's an asshole.”

 

“You're joking, right?” Lexa raises an eyebrow and Sienne explains herself. “Lexa, _you're_ an asshole.”

 

Which is not fair. Lexa can be very... well, nice isn't the word. But she can be agreeable, kind even. She's not Anya level of asshatery. “No, I'm not.”

 

“The first thing you said to me when Zoran was born was,” Sienne scrunches her face up, twisting her top list into a disgusted snarl. “'Jesus. are you gonna fix his face?'”

 

“Well.” Lexa sighs, feeling every bit defeated. She'll never be able to live that one down. She'd just been... surprised. That was all. He wasn't what she was expecting. “His face was fucked up.”

 

“He had a cleft palate, that is not that weird. Also,” She leans forward to snag another plum, but Lexa makes a little whine of indignant protest in the back of her throat and picks the bowl up protectively. “You could've led with 'congratulations.'” Sienne grabs the wine bottle instead, uncorking it and sniffing at the neck as if she knows what scents she's looking for. Her nose crumples in disgust, but she takes a swig anyway.

 

“Okay, fine. So, I'm an asshole. Fucking sue me.” Lexa mutters, feeling properly chastised though, honestly, she still doesn't think she should be blamed for thinking the kid looked weird with his upper lip split in half. It was an honest response.

 

Sienne shrugs a shoulder and lays one hand atop her stomach, the other still holding the wine bottle and propped up on the chair's arm, kicking her feet up to rest on the table. “Anyway, I get why you wouldn't talk to Anya. So does she.That's why I'm here—because for some strange reason I still don't really understand I love your stupid face. So, spill.”

 

She at least has the decency to take another swig of the wine and hold it out to Lexa to take—if anyone Lexa knows is going to talk about feelings, they sure as hell aren't going to do it _sober_ and takes a slow sip as she ponders just exactly what is wrong with her. She clears her throat and thumbs the shredded foil on the bottle's lip. She finds its rough sharpness oddly comforting.

 

“I just have a lot going on. The forest is on fire for fuck's sake and I've got the media up my ass about it, even though nobody really cares about the ecosystem. It just sounds sensational, you know? 'Rainforest on Fire: Global Warming' blah blah blah.” She feels a strong impulse to take another sip and she follows it, this time erring on the side of a swig. The buzz from the glass she'd had earlier lights up in her brain almost instantaneously and fuck, is she grateful. “And the new grant starts soon, which means Clarke will be around the office.” Clarke. Her mind stalls for a beat before her mouth catches back up and remembers to bury her name in the mountain of shit Lexa's dealing with. “Plus, school's starting again soon, which means paperwork and lesson plans and students who all need me to babysit them. And,” she waves the bottle in Sienne's direction, “Anya, who can't go a day without getting into trouble if I'm not supervising her. Indra, too.”

 

“I get it,” Sienne says, reaching to take the bottle back. “Lots of babysitting. You're complaining to a married straight woman who's also a mom, though, so no dice.”

 

“Oasis is a good dad.”

  
“Yeah. He's a great dad. Because he's still a twelve year old at heart.” She pulls a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and places one between her lips. “Don't get me wrong,” the words are muffled and awkward coming out from around the smoke, but she keeps talking anyway, “I love him. But sometimes he just makes my job twice as hard.” Lexa hums her acceptance and Sienne tosses the pack to land on her lap. “Which is why you and I are gonna have a good old-fashioned adult night while he watches Zoran and Tris and you are gonna deal with your shit in the process.” She takes one final slug of wine then passes it back. “Now, Clarke's gonna be in town. Are you okay with that?”

 

Lexa shrugs a shoulder, carefully avoiding looking at Sienne, making extended eye contact with the plum tree she'd picked from earlier that day a hundred feet into the yard. “Yeah. Why not? It's been five years. She's over it.” She raises a cigarette to her lips and goes to light it before she realizes her mistake. “I'm over it.” She corrects, then clears her throat and shifts awkwardly in her chair. “We're over it.”

 

“Very convincing, Dr. Woods.” Sienne says with a laugh. She reaches into her pocket and fishes out her phone. “Hang on, it's Oasis.”

 

Lexa nods and brings the lighter up to her cigarette again. She hasn't smoked in years, and now she remembers why. The smoke hits her throat with force and then she's coughing, struggling to bring in enough air to breathe properly and Sienne—Sienne is _laughing._

 

When she finally calms down enough to speak through her literal tears of laughter, she says “having a little trouble there, Lexa?”

 

“I don't smoke anymore.” The words come out through the smoke still clinging to her lungs and make her voice scratchy and hoarse.

 

“Clearly.” Sienne says with one last chuckle. After a few beats of silence where Lexa just stews in her own shame, Sienne adds, “okay. Are we done with feelings talk? Cause Anya's waiting in the car with more booze and this bottle's done.”

 

Lexa snorts; she should have known when Sienne showed up it wasn't going to be a simple night of bonding and feelings talk and one bottle of wine. She _knew_ but she didn't want to believe it. “Yeah, we're done.”

 

“Thank god.”

 

\----------------------------------

 

Lexa wakes the next morning to the whistling of her teapot and the clanging of pans. When she finally stumbles into the kitchen, head aching and stomach some awful combination of famished and nauseated, Anya's pouring water into the French press and Sienne's poking at something in a pan—eggs, by the smell of it. They don't notice her at first and she takes a moment to appreciate them, something rare when it comes to her best friends. They're tough, and they're mean, and so rough around the edges they're practically wearing steel spikes but they also show up; they get her drunk and bring her cigarettes when she's feeling shitty and don't make her talk more than she wants to and they make her breakfast the next morning.

 

What more could you ask for?

 

Anya has her phone out and is chuckling to herself as she types furiously on the small screen. Lexa clears her throat and they both look up: Sienne with a smile and Anya with her normal careful gaze.

 

“You should check your facebook.” Is all she says.

 

Lexa retrieves her phone from her room and pulls up the app while she's padding back into the kitchen, and her mouth drops in horror just before she turns the corner. Which is lucky, because she's sure Anya would get an inordinate amount of pleasure from seeing her like this right now.

 

There's a picture of her, hacking up a lung with a cigarette held far away from her body. The picture is a nice one, clearly taken from Sienne's iphone, and you can see the pink glow of the sunset lighting up her tan skin with a warm evening glow.

 

She still looks like shit, of course. And there are _comments._

 

**Tris Gunner**

I thought you always told me smoking is for idiots who want to feel cooler than they really are, Auntie L.

 

**Anya Gunner**

It obviously is. Have you met your aunt?

 

And of course, because the universe absolutely hates her apparently, Clarke (who she'd only added clandestinely and obviously drunkenly the night before) has chimed in, too. She taps out her response quickly before going to take her seat at the table without a word to the snickering women making her breakfast in the kitchen.

 

**Clarke Griffin**

How's your throat, Lex?

 

**Lexa Woods**

Hurts.

 

“So, you and Clarke are facebook friends now, huh?” Sienne's the one to break the silence, and Lexa's not sure if she should be grateful it was her and not Anya.

 

She grunts out a gruff, “I told you, we're fine.” Which is supposed to brook no arguments, but Anya and Sienne share a look like they're not buying it in the least. Lexa's phone vibrates and she diverts her gaze to the screen before she can blush about it and give it all away again.

 

**Clarke Griffin**

And your lungs?

 

**Lexa Woods**

Been coughing all day

 

**Clarke Griffin**

Life lessons, Tris.

 

**Lexa Woods**

You heard it here first. Smoking is for chumps.

 

\-----------------------------------

 

“Clarke.” Marcus greets her with a wide, genuine smile that almost seems foreign to his face. It's not that he's not normally nice or happy, necessarily, just that whenever they've been together in the past, he's worn the same passive, intense mask. He is, after all, a therapist. And to give away his emotions can mean missing an opportunity to understand, or to unintentionally shape his client's response in a way that takes them further away from their truth.

 

“Dr. Kane.” Clarke reaches out and takes the hand he's stretched out to her. “Thank you for fitting me into your schedule. I know it's been a while since we've seen each other.”

 

He smiles again and motions an arm toward the couch. “Of course. I can't say I'm glad you've returned, but I'm happy you're finding it easier to reach out for help than you did before.” She settles onto the couch—leather and black, the only furniture in the room aside from a desk made out of a laminated wood, the plush office chair that rests behind it, and an end table nestled next to the armchair that Kane now sits in. All of it dark and sleek and modern—metal and wood stained black. “And please, call me Marcus. There's no need for formalities like that here.”

 

She nods and knots her hands together in front of her, the words she'd been formulating since she'd made the appointment suddenly disappearing from her grasp. She thinks maybe this was a bad idea, coming here, maybe she doesn't need his help after all. But when she closes her eyes and Lexa is there, smirking at her, pulling at a cigarette between lips that are full and lush, and the anger and affection come rising back up in her chest—well, she'd thought she was past this now. When she thinks of the other day at the bar, when she should have been socializing with Finn and his friends, all she was thinking was _Lexa Lexa Lexa_. She probably does need some professional help, as much as it pains her to admit it, and she won't wait for another month sequestered in her bedroom to seek it.

 

“What brings you in today, Clarke?”

 

She looks down to her hands, which are hanging between her knees, and lets out a long sigh through her nose. “Do you remember my ex? Lexa?”

 

“Yes, of course. Your breakup with her was our entry point into what was bothering you.”

 

She nods again—it feels like all she's capable of now, nodding and wringing her hands uncomfortably tight—and swallows down the pit of anxiety lodged in her windpipe. “I found out she and I are going to be working together soon. I was fine at first, but when I actually saw her again—” Her breath hitches, stealing her words along with it and effectively shutting her up. She takes in a deep breath and tries again, but there are tears scalding the back of her throat that she hadn't even realized were unshed. “I'm still so angry, and it's confusing because it's easy to be angry, but it's also so easy to fall back into how we were as a couple and it feels like the only thing I can't do is be neutral toward her.” She looks up into Kane's eyes, hoping he's somehow become worse at hiding his thoughts but finding him looking back at her with lips pressed lightly together and eyebrows drawn in in thought.

 

“What I'm hearing you say, and again,” he reaches a hand out in placation, just a few inches from touching her arm, a little smile on his lips like they're in on a secret together, “you know the drill: correct me if I'm misunderstanding you.” His hands come back to tent in front of him. “What I'm hearing you say is that you still have a great deal of feelings for her—whether they be happy feelings or angry feelings or sad feelings—and you're finding that frustrating because you want to have no feelings toward her whatsoever.”

 

Clarke sighs and lets her head hang, as well. “Well. I mean, no. It's not that I don't want to have any feelings, I just don't want to have _uncontrollable_ feelings.”

 

He leans back, elbows still on the armrests, fingers still tented in front of his chest, and crosses one leg over the other. “And why is that?”

 

“I have to work with her.” Clarke raises her head to catch Kane's eye with as much fire in her gaze as she can muster but instead of cowering and ceding to her wishes like most people do, he simply tilts his head off to the side curiously.

 

“You can't work with people you have strong feelings toward?”

 

“Of course I can.” She snaps, her jaw clicking shut with the force of it, and the muscles in her shoulders crank tight. “I just...” She catches herself, then, sees the grip her emotions have on her—how they steer her away from herself and into a dark gray—and she breathes out slowly through her nose. “I'm in a good place now.” She says, her voice a great deal softer now, though her hands still grasp tightly at the beaded throw pillow on her lap. She realizes with a small amount of nagging alarm she isn't sure when she'd grabbed it. She loosens her grip and places it beside her on the couch, clears her throat and straightens her back. “I'm worried she's gonna ruin it, I guess.”

 

“And how would she do that?”

 

“I don't know. By being stupid and smug, and... and...” She throws out her hands in a gesture of utter exasperation. “And _Lexa_.”

 

Marcus leans forward again, pinning Clarke with his gaze, and she finds herself doing her best to stare him down in return again, though he still doesn't seem particularly intimidated by her. “Clarke. We both know that she doesn't control you or your emotions. But there's clearly something about the emotions and actions she elicits in you that you find frightening. That's what we need to be exploring. What were you feeling when you saw her last?”

 

She breathes out thickly through her nose and tries to recall the encounter. “We got into a little bit of a fight, and then I took a deep breath like you taught me, and told her we should talk in private. She made an innuendo, but I stayed calm and brought her back to my room so we could talk. All I meant to do was tell her we'd be working together, as an olive branch. Give her time to prepare, too. I just kept thinking, I just—” She shuts her eyes and shakes her head, suddenly feeling light in her body, suddenly too cold and too damn tired to be here right now.

 

“You're avoiding the question spectacularly.” Marcus says, and Clarke's head shoots up.

 

“What are you talking about? I'm telling you what happened when I saw her last.”

 

Marcus chuckles. “Yes, but I asked you what you were feeling when you saw her last, not what happened.”

 

“Oh. Right.” She takes a moment to think about it, really think about it. To not just respond from her thoughts but from her heart. It's a skill that took years to develop, and even now she's infuriatingly bad at it. She hates being bad at things. She hates that she's here, that her father had died and that Lexa had broken her heart and that her normalcy, all chances of being a well-adjusted adult had been shattered so easily, that it had all been so fragile to begin with.

 

She lets herself sit in the moment, in thoughts of Lexa, of the blaze that burns always in her eyes—somehow still always soft and texturedas pale moss. She thinks of the hesitant, lurching way Lexa seemed to catch herself from moving toward Clarke—just the subtlest of fidgets, really, almost unnoticeable—yet still so, so telling. “I felt...” The tears are back, burning in her eyes now, sliding hot down her cheeks. She wipes at one with the back of her hand. “Pain. Anger.” She licks at her lips, knowing the last word that lingers, caught on the ridges of her teeth, refusing to come out at her behest. “Warmth.” She chokes out instead, because it feels like the most she can give Lexa right now. It's ridiculous, because she knows logically thatLexa will never know what's happening here, but Clarke's not willing to give her the satisfaction of putting that label on it.

 

“Warmth?” Kane asks, raising an eyebrow. “Can you elaborate on that?”

 

Clarke can imagine the words she wants to say. Knows exactly what they would sound like. But whatever command it is in her brain that makes her vocal cords vibrate is shutting down and she just shakes her head and chokes down a sob instead. “No.” Is all she can manage.

 

Kane nods and reaches over for the tissue box on the end table, holding it out for Clarke to take a couple. She does so with a nod of thanks and he speaks again. “Take your time. We have plenty of it.”

 

She spends the next two minutes trying to stem the flow of tears: taking deep, shuddering breaths that still don't bring her enough oxygen; clenching and unclenching her fists until they're hot and achy with the exertion. She thinks of Finn's smile, imagines his arms circling her and holding her close, imagines she can hear his heartbeat through the hard bone and muscle of his chest. It's this that helps the most in blocking out thoughts of Lexa, and she feels herself slowly start to reground in the moment. She can feel her toes again, her fingers, the tip of her nose. She can _breathe_.

 

She tries again.

 

“I felt like I could remember being with her.” Her voice is still scratchy and shaky, but she pushes through anyway. “I remembered how she always saw the best in me, how nice she smelled and how—in her own weird way—she always did everything she could to make me happy. And all the bad things, like how emotionally unavailable she was, and how she would argue with me sometimes just to argue, they all faded away and I was still in—I still loved her.”

 

Kane looks at her with a softness in his eyes she's not accustomed to, and his voice is low when he speaks. “And that made you angry?”

 

She looks down at her hands, not wrenching one another anymore, but instead a single thumb worrying the palm of the other. “I don't want to love her.” She says softly. “I spent so long carrying this knife wound in my heart that wouldn't heal and now it finally has and what if she just rips it open again?” She shakes her head. “I don't know if I could handle that.”

 

“What are you afraid will happen if she does? What is it you think you can't handle?”

 

“The pain of it, I guess. I'm tired of hurting. I just want to be happy.” When she meets his eyes again, she can feel how pleading they are, the strength of how much she just wants him to make it go away overwhelming and thick. “Don't I deserve that?”

 

“Of course you do.” Kane taps his index fingers together and takes her in. She looks... defeated in a way she hasn't in a long time. She looks exhausted. He can't help the twang of sympathy that flares inside him, though he manages to temper the frown encroaching on his cheeks. “When do you have to begin working with her?”

 

She falls back into the couch, almost gets swallowed whole by how plush it is and how much she's folded in on herself. “Next month.”

 

“Okay. That doesn't give us a lot of time to work through this, but we'll meet on skype while you're gone, okay?” She nods and he continues, “in the meantime, I want you to remember this.” He rips a piece of paper out of his notebook and hands it and his pen over to her. “Write this down: pain is a natural part of growth.” He pauses while she writes, needing to take a moment occasionally to wipe errant tears off her cheeks so they don't stain the page. “Emotions do not have a beginning and an end. They are mutable, adaptable, even cyclical at times. While I honor my emotions, they do not rule me. The way I feel around Lexa is a part of me, but it, too, does not rule me. I am in control of my own destiny.” She finishes writing, and looks up to catch his eye. He nods toward the paper. “Read it back to me.”

 

She swallows, hands shaking as she raises the page to look at it. She takes a deep breath and, “pain is a natural part of growth. Emotions do not have a beginning and an end. They are mutable, adaptable, even cyclical at times. While I honor my emotions, they do not rule me. The way I feel around—” Her voice falters, and her eyes fall shut. Then she opens them again, and now there's a metallic glint to them, hard and determined. “The way I feel around Lexa,” she says the name through gritted teeth, “is a part of me, but it, too, does not rule me. I am in control of my own destiny.”

 

He smiles. “How did that feel?”

 

She's staring down at the paper, unblinking as her eyes flicker across the page again and again. “Good.” She says, finally. “I am in control of my own destiny.” She repeats, then glances back up to catch his eye. “I can do this.” There's a hesitance, an uncertainty edged with defiant determination in her eyes that he finds utterly endearing, and he widens his smile beyond its natural reach to convey his assurance.

 

“Yes, you can. You're strong, Clarke, and incredibly accomplished.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

They share a few moments of tender silence, and Clarke has never appreciated Kane more. He is a kind man, at heart, a bit rough around the edges at times but well-intentioned. He reminds her of her father. Once, that had been painful. Now, it's an almost saccharine comfort.

 

“Now,” he breaks the silence, shifting in his chair to cross his legs the opposite way and take his pad of paper back up, “we still have another half-hour in the session. Tuck that away somewhere safe and let's continue.”


	5. i'm a little bit bitter, you're a little too sweet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this doesn't feel completely finished, but i've been sitting on it for way too long to justify not posting it. hope y'all enjoy it!

The first time Clarke sees Lexa on the streets of Seattle, she's thrown wildly off kilter. And it's not just the sudden appearance of Lexa in her life again, it's all of it—how natural it feels to be here, sort of like she's coming home. See, the second she'd landed at Seatac and stepped out into the terminal, when she'd driven her rental car through the heart of the city, it had all come rushing back. There was more traffic, and more condos. The architecture had changed a little, become this odd smattering of orange panels and steel and lots and lots of windows. There were somehow even more Starbucks than before. But aside from all of those really quite minor changes, the city was still the same. Gray and drizzly and full of people in hoodies with their heads down charging through the streets with so much determination she's still surprised it doesn't keep them dry.

 

Lexa is just another one of those people. Black skinny jeans and military boots and a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled up and over her head. She looks like another student, really, because her face will always be youthful. She'll look eighteen until she's forty and that's why she blends in with the mix of umbrellas (the freshmen from out of town will learn soon, she knows from experience, that this is a taboo. But until they find themselves a nice jacket made out of either leather or denim, they'll have to suffer the shame) and damp hair and people squinting through the raindrops on their glasses.

 

But the real reason she's caught so off guard by seeing her is that she'd been preparing for this moment all week, assuming it would happen at the meeting she has scheduled with Lexa's lab in fifteen minutes. It started with a morning affirmation, every day in the mirror after she brushed her teeth: “I can do this.” Then, obsessively going over what were appropriate and inappropriate questions to ask Lexa when she sees her so that they'll have things to talk about, but nothing too personal that could make it awkward. Making sure she keeps the piece of paper she'd written on with Dr. Kane handy. Then, making the playlist she's listening to right now, the one that's all “fuck you, Lexa, I'm fine. I'm over it. Go away.”

 

Except, well, not exactly that smooth.

 

Hang on, maybe it's important to set the scene a bit. Rewind to the beginning again. Clarke's in this rental car, a brand new Honda Civic. It's not Finn's Lexus, but Clarke is more than happy with it, anyway. It's a good car, a solid car, with leather seats and an auxiliary cable and an engine that runs smooth as glass. She's driving this car, singing along to her playlist, the windshield wipers squeaking arrhythmically against the windshield. She happens to have _really_ gotten into t he song playing and, when she finally realizes that the person she had thought was a student standing there waiting to cross the street and staring directly at her was Lexa, it was too late. Because she was mid-yell/sing (“How come I never hear you say 'I just wanna be with you'? Guess you never felt that way. But since you been go—“), and Lexa was barely suppressing the smirk on her lips, watching her.

 

And there's more. The skinny jeans hug Lexa's curves perfectly in that moment, damp and tight and wonderful. And Lexa's not curvy, actually, it's not curves of hips or breasts, it's curves of muscle. Lexa is naturally thin, she'd be lanky if it weren't for the  dense muscle she's forged from climbing trees and cliffs (that's one thing Clarke had never been able to get into, as much as she tried for Lexa's sake) and the curves are the tight definition of strength, the kind that had Lexa lifting her into the air during their kisses, the type that had Clarke wrapping her legs around Lexa's hips and grinding as hard as she can.

 

That's probably why Clarke whips her hand out to turn down the sound so that Lexa can't possibly overhear the next song on the playlist—Britney Spears' Stronger. It's a good post-breakup song, damn it—before she rolls the window down, doing her best to pretend she hadn't just got caught doing something horribly, horribly embarrassing in front of the ex she was totally just singing about being over.

 

Who she _is_ over.

 

She reaches up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Hey.”

 

Lexa rolls her shoulders a bit, glances around her and takes a step toward the curb, leaning down to peer in through the window. “Hi.”

 

And then, Clarke realizes with a mounting horror that she has no idea what to say next. She looks around to find something to talk about—anything, really, anything will do—and blurts out the first thing that comes to mind. “Want a ride?”

 

Lexa purses her lips, Clarke can catch it for just the few milliseconds before Lexa turns her head to look across the street and shakes her head. “No, I think it's actually closer on foot than the garage would be.”

 

“Right.” Clarke clears her throat and it should be weird, how they're sort of suspended mid-conversation, mid-intersection, but Clarke finds something oddly familiar about the way Lexa's looking at her, lips trying not to smile again even though it's so clear in her eyes. Clarke motions toward the moving crowd with her chin. “Light changed.”

 

Lexa looks over her shoulder and finds that, sure enough, the light had changed and everyone has begun moving without her. “Right, Bye.” She says, a bit clipped, then disappears back into the crowd of students and professors and staff moving haphazardly through the intersection. Clarke sighs and leans her head against the steering wheel, feeling like a complete and total idiot. 

 

Then again, it could have gone worse. Much, much worse. She did fine. It's fine. She reaches into her jacket pocket and runs her finger along the edge of the paper with Dr. Kane's words on it. Emotions are cyclical, they don't have a beginning or an end. Clarke can choose how she responds to Lexa. She can do this.

 

* * *

 

To say Lexa is nervous about seeing Clarke is an overwhelming understatement. She'd already seen her once, which she would have hoped would dissipate some of the anxiety digging a pit into her goddamn soul every second of her day today, but no. Instead, she was even more uncomfortable. Because, see, she'd pretty much forgotten. In the rush of everything that was going on that month, the specter of Clarke Being Here had gotten pushed into the back of her mind. She hadn't even consciously thought about her since the grant announcement. It had been that nagging thought that was never fully realized. But then she'd been walking to work and heard a noise and turned her head (never a good idea, it's always either a fight or a spectacle she wishes she hasn't seen) and there Clarke was, singing along to one of those terrible pop songs she's always enjoyed so much. Lexa hadn't been able to tell which song it was, of course, but Clarke had seemed so unrestrained in that moment, so free of all of the self-doubts that often clung to her that Lexa couldn't help but smile at the sight.

 

And then Clarke noticed her staring.

 

That part could have gone better, she thinks, though she's not entirely sure how. She could have accepted Clarke's offer for a ride, but then they would have sat awkwardly beside one another in the car and made awkward conversation, and Lexa would have been late. Lexa isn't ever late, isn't sure she's capable of it. Isn't sure if spending time alone with Clarke on her home turf (and, more importantly, on their relationships' home turf) instead of in a neutral zone will be wonderful in a painful sort of way or painful in a wonderful sort of way and isn't sure she wants to find out.

 

She's playing with the pen in her hands, spinning it with one finger on the capped tip and the other on the body of it and watching as Lincoln flirts with Octavia like it's _easy_. Like it's the most natural thing in the world for two people to be attracted to each other, for them to smile and laugh and touch without restraint or care to who's watching them. She tries to remember the last time romance seemed so simple and uncomplicated and can't, and she thinks maybe she's not too old to join a dating site, after all. All her students talk about something called Tinder. Maybe she should try it.

 

Then, the door opens like the fucking heavens and there's Clarke, a ray of sunshine as she always is at work. She can just turn her charm on and off, something that's utterly baffling to Lexa, who is always just, well... Lexa. Clarke's smiling wide, crinkling her cheeks and her eyes and almost hiding the mole above her lip and Lexa can't even look at her she looks so perfect. So _happy_. Lexa likes the idea of Clarke happy in theory, but when she adds the inevitable ending (happy _without Lexa_ ), it suddenly feels too solid, and she swallows down the bile like it'll settle the anxiety in her stomach, like the anxiety and the nausea aren't one and the same at the beginning and the end of it all.

 

“Hey, everyone.” Clarke grins, moving toward the unoccupied seat next to Lexa at the table. “Sorry I'm a little late, I forgot the parking garage was so far from this building.” She turns that grin—infuriatingly light and playful—at Lexa, and she utterly melts. Just drops into a puddle and soaks into the seat.

 

Clarke knows. She knows Lexa was worried about being late when she declined her offer, and she's teasing her about it. Lexa realizes she's lost, then. Realizes she'll never survive this. There aren't words in her mind except for _fuck fuck fuck_ and, for once in her life, she's grateful for Octavia when she jumps up and screams too loudly in the cramped conference room. If they'd been anywhere else, Lexa is almost sure Octavia would have vaulted clean across the table but they're at the closest thing Octavia has to work, so she runs around it and sweeps Clarke up into a bear hug before she can sit all the way down.

 

They prattle for a bit, a lot of _how have you been_ 's, and _I hope Bell hasn't been too much trouble_ 's, and _when are you gonna get married already_ 's (that one cuts especially deep, and Lexa can feel the way it forces her in on herself, makes the rest of the conversation feel like white noise), and _me? When are you gonna get married_ 's, and Lexa's hands are shaking so much she has to put the pen down on the table and fold them in her lap instead.

 

When she looks up, she finds Lincoln watching her with interest, his eyes as deep as they've ever been, even though they always feel like they're piercing into some truth she's hidden deep inside of her that even she isn't aware of. But then Octavia's heading back to her seat and the door opens for Anya and Indra and Lexa just wants to be anywhere but here. This meeting hasn't even started and it still can't end fast enough.

 

“Hi.” Clarke smiles at the two as they enter, and extends her hand out to the only person in the room she doesn't already know. “I'm Clarke Griffin, the grant administrator. You must be Indra.”

 

Indra looks disdainfully down to Clarke's hand and then over to Lexa. Like the idea of touching Clarke is so distasteful she needs Lexa to save her. But Lexa is far more interested in the marring on the old wooden conference table and she can't be bothered to meet Indra's pleading eye (well, as much as Indra is capable of pleading).

 

“You may address me as Mrs. Porter.” Indra finally says, and Lexa sucks her lips into her mouth to keep from laughing or snapping at Indra for her rudeness.

 

Clarke recovers nicely, to be fair. Just a cleared throat and a dropped hand and a, “right. Of course, Mrs. Porter. Well, are we all here?”

 

The door bursts open and Cali enters with an abashed smile on her lips. “Hi, sorry. Did I miss anything?”

 

“No, actually. You're right on time.” Clarke looks down at the papers in her hand and frowns. “I'm sorry, what's your name? I'm not seeing you on my list.”

 

“I'm Cali.”

 

“I don't have a Cali on here.” Cali flushes and looks to Lexa, who straightens from where she'd slouched (she really needs to stop doing that, it's bad for her back). “Just a—”

 

Luckily, Lexa manages to pull herself together in time to say “Cali Bacic.”

 

Clarke takes a moment to look between them, from the name on her list to the woman in front of her. It takes just a half a second for it all to click before a blush rises to warm her cheeks. “Oh. Oh!” She clears her throat and extends her hand. “Of course. Sorry about that, Cali.”

 

Cali takes her hand and smiles. “It's okay. I know I should change it, it's just expensive and I'm always busy when the courthouse is open.”

 

“Of course. It's no problem.”

 

“No.” Cali says, suddenly fierce, and adds “I'm trans. I'm not ashamed of it.”

 

Clarke just smiles at her, tender and sweet, and says. “You shouldn't be.” She motions to the empty chair, and Cali takes her seat. “Okay, so now that we're all here, we can begin. As you all probably know by now, my name is Clarke Griffin and I'm a grant administrator at the National Science Foundation. That means I'm responsible for going over grant proposals and deciding which are eligible for funding and which are not. Most of the time, that means mountains of paperwork, but this is a special case. Your lab received this grant because you've proposed a novel way of counteracting the detrimental effects of climate change and logging on forest ecosystems. I'm here for two reasons: the first is to make sure everyone here is trained on NSF's goals and expectations, and the second is to protect the foundation's investment. Does that make sense?”

 

There's a round of bobbing heads, and Clarke continues. Clarke continues, but Lexa tunes out again. It's not that what Clarke is saying is superfluous or unimportant. It's just that Lexa can't bring herself to pay attention to anything but the subtle motions of Clarke's hands when she speaks, the way they rise and fall in rhythm with her voice. She can't help but notice every breath, every swallow. She's captivated.

 

Trouble. Clarke is always trouble.

 

It isn't until Clarke says her name that Lexa is able to refocus on what she's saying. “...Dr. Woods will be more than willing to help me answer any questions you may have.” She turns to Lexa expectantly and Lexa hopes that Clarke wouldn't offer her up for anything she is unprepared for.

 

“Of course.” She says, and again it feels clipped and awkward, but everyone else seems perfectly content with her answer. She's glad they can't see the war inside her, the raging seas of her affections that are crashing against her ribs with a force she's not sure she can handle. At the same time, she can't quite understand how no one can seem to hear the roaring of the ocean in her chest.

 

“Great.” Clarke says, and turns her attention away from Lexa (who lets out a long, silent exhale in relief) to the rest of the group. “Above all, I hope you won't think of me as an authority figure. I want you all to succeed, I want to help you change the world. I hope we can all be friends.”

 

All of the graduate students are smiling, and the rest of the staff is still scowling (Lexa hasn't seen Indra do anything but and Anya reserves smiles only for Tris and occasionally Lexa).

 

“Okay, you're...” Clarke motions awkwardly with her hands, chuckling slightly at herself as she does, “dismissed, I guess.”

 

Everyone stands and begins stuffing their notebooks into their bags. Indra is out the door like a shot, and the grad students have all begun to gather around Clarke to get to know her better (or to continue catching up in Octavia's case, she supposes). Lexa, for her part, takes her time in packing up her things and stands near the door, doing everything she can to make it seem natural. She checks her watch, checks her phone, fiddles with the strap on her bag.

 

“You're lingering.” Anya says, and Lexa has been so preoccupied with watching Clarke from the corner of her eye, with looking like she's not watching Clarke at all, that she didn't even notice she'd shown up.

 

“No, I'm not.” Lexa knows she's pouting, but she can't quite bring herself to drop the infantile defensiveness from her tone. “I'm just waiting to welcome Clarke to the lab. It's called professional courtesy, you should look into it.”

 

Anya snorts—something lost in the chasm between amusement and derision—and turns to watch as Clarke reaches a hand out to Cali's arm, smiling bright and once again motioning with those hands. Those hands that Lexa will never be able to look at without thinking about what they'd once done to her, the minute ways Clarke had of driving Lexa to the edge of orgasm and then sometimes over it, when Clarke felt like it. “Yeah, this is obviously professional.”

 

Lexa grinds down on her jaw and wills the memories of Clarke's touch from her mind. “What is that supposed to mean?”

 

“It means you spent the entire meeting staring at her like you're the fucking heart eye emoji.” Anya says, and cuts Lexa's next objection off with, “don't worry, nobody else noticed.”

 

Lexa crosses her arms over her chest petulantly and raises an eyebrow into an arc exaggerated for Anya's benefit. “How do you even know what an emoji is?”

 

“I live with a thirteen year-old. No matter how much I try not to know these things, they catch up with me.”

 

That's the moment that Cali, Lincoln, and Octavia decide to slide by them, all big smiles and energy buzzing on their skin and Lexa's happy for them. Happy, because she remembers when the idea of a new project could still do that to her, when she wasn't jaded and beaten down by disappointment after disappointment when it came to funding. And, if she is being entirely honest, she has no small amount of wary excitement she's keeping stashed somewhere deep inside. She'll let herself feel it when the funding is secure, not a second sooner.

 

Clarke starts walking toward them, and Lexa doesn't even look at Anya when she says, “don't you have work to do?” No, she's not looking at Anya but she can feel the eye roll anyway.

 

“Yes, ma'am. Right away, ma'am.” And then Anya disappears into the hallway and it's just them. Clarke and Lexa. Lexa and Clarke. It's terrifying and thrilling all in one.

 

“Hey.” Clarke brushes up against Lexa where she's holding the door open to move through it and Lexa reminds herself to breathe before falling into step beside her.

 

“Hello.” Lexa shoves her hands into her pockets and realizes she's doing it again already—not breathing—but who could blame her when Clarke is looking at her and she's looking at Clarke and there's this _thing_ between them, this connection that's always been there that feels so physical in an emotional and real and oddly comforting way. She catches herself when her eyes flicker down to Clarke's lips—just for a second, what harm can it do—and she clears her throat and returns her attention to where she's walking. “I just wanted to welcome you to the lab. Officially.”

 

“Well, thank you.” Clarke says, smiling shyly and tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “Officially.”

 

“Of course.” They come to a stop outside the lab's door, but that has nothing to do with the uncomfortably hollow beating of Lexa's heart in her chest. Definitely not. “If there's anything I can do—copier codes, office supply acquisition, how to talk to Indra, that sort of thing—just let me know.” She turns and starts to walk away, figuring it's best not to drag this out any longer than she needs to, when she feels a hand on her arm.

 

“Actually, I could use a cup of coffee.” Clarke withdraws her hand as soon as Lexa turns and grasps her other with it. “I went to the place you and I used to go to together, but it was closed. Have any suggestions?”

 

Lexa nods, and swallows, and does all the things someone is going to do when they're about to say something and they aren't sure if it's brilliant or completely insane. “I do, actually. It's only a few blocks. I could walk you, if you'd like?”

 

Clarke's smile blooms. “I would.”

 

“Great.” She motions down toward the stairwell. “Shall we?”

 

They walk for a few steps, back out into the hallway, before Clarke speaks. “It's so weird being back. This place even smells the same.”

“I can't believe you remember it well enough to know the smell.” Lexa does her best to meter the rapid beating of her heart in her chest, to keep her hands buried in her pockets where Clarke can't notice how they shake and sweat. “You were barely ever here.”

 

Clarke laughs and shakes her head in the way she does when Lexa's being ridiculous. “Are you kidding? You were here all the time, which meant I was always dropping by to bring you food and generally make sure you hadn't worked yourself to death.” She looks down to the floor and there's a shadow that passes over her face, turns her expression murky. “That was the only way I got to see you some weeks.”

 

They reach the door and Lexa holds it open for Clarke to step through, and earns another smile in reward.

  
“How chivalrous of you.”

 

Lexa shrugs, trying her best to shake the memory of kissing Clarke on the couches in the grad lounge. They haven't changed, are the same polyester monstrosities they've always been, are the same mixture of must and mildew and coffee. “I'm just being polite.”

 

“Mmm-hmm.” Another few steps, and then, “So, is this coffee gonna cost more than my rent?”

 

That quip actually gets a smile out of Lexa, and she's thankful for the distraction. “That depends, are you going to order a drink that's more milk and sugar than actual coffee?”

 

Clarke rolls her eyes. “Such a snob.”

 

“I enjoy things that are made with quality and care.” Lexa responds, and Clarke's hand brushes against the back of Lexa's where they're hanging side by side. Lexa swallows and chooses to ignore it. “And I also appreciate it when people aren't exploited for my benefit.”

 

“Right, right.” Clarke rolls her eyes and tries to stem the smile on her lips. “I know, we don't need to have this conversation again.”

 

The coffee shop isn't far from the building and they're there before they know it. Clarke's hand only brushes against Lexa's another few times—three, not that she's counting, she just appreciates being exact—and it's definitely not a big deal. It definitely doesn't make Lexa feel like she's dying to take Clarke's hand. Lexa doesn't even like public displays of affection. She pushes open the door to the coffee shop, happy to be done with their walk, and Clarke just laughs the second she walks in.

 

“This place is so you.” She says, voice raised so she can be heard over the music and din of voices.

 

“They play their music a bit loud for my tastes.” Lexa responds, watching Clarke look at the menu written in chalk above the baristas and espresso machines and pastry cases.

 

“Maybe. But it's music you would _so_ listen to.”

 

They step up and order (Clarke gets a sixteen ounce vanilla latte and Lexa tries not to notice, and manages not to mention it at all and Lexa orders an eight ounce coffee, no room) and stand off to the side to wait.

 

“So, what does your girlfriend think of me being here?” Clarke asks, watching the baristas work, not looking over at Lexa.

 

It's kind of endearing, the way Clarke is pretending not to care, the way she holds her breath while she waits for Lexa to respond. Is she nervous about it? Would she be jealous? The idea of lying about being in a relationship crosses Lexa's mind, but then she'd have to keep it up and magically come up with a girlfriend that doesn't exist or at the very least field questions about one, and lying has never really been Lexa's strong suit.

 

“I'm not in a relationship at the moment, actually.” She feels that same moment of anticipation Clarke had the moment she says it, except she finds the courage to look over at her.

 

Clarke just bites her lip and nods, something Lexa finds completely unreadable, and maybe she'd misjudged the question? Maybe it had been hopeful and not worried after all.

 

“Really? You're not the type of person that stays single for very long.” Clarke says, and Lexa's not entirely sure if it's a compliment or an accusation or something entirely innocent and offhand that Clarke hadn't even spent a moment's thought on.

 

So, she does what she's good at and deflects. “I'm not the one who was talking about getting married earlier this morning.”

 

“That was Octavia, not me.”

 

There's a pulse of hope through Lexa's blood, heady and thick and overwhelming.“So, you don't want to marry your boyfriend?”  
  
Clarke crosses her arms over her chest and blows out a long breath. “It's not that. I do love him, I just don't think I'm ready yet. I'm still young.”

 

“You seemed to be ready with me.” The words slip out and Lexa doesn't even realize she's said them, doesn't even realize she's opened this conversation back up. She and Clarke don't seem capable of talking about anything but their relationship, and it feels like they're setting a collision course into the sun but can't seem to stop themselves.

 

Clarke just studies Lexa's face for a moment, a frown carving into the pretty curve of her mouth, before responding, “it was different with you.”

 

That piques Lexa's interest. She remembers all too well the relentless conversations about marriage they'd had, how Clarke had been so insistent on it the last two years they were together, despite Lexa's objections that the whole thing was patriarchal and a weird legal contract at its core. “Oh?”

 

“I've had a lot of time to think about it.” Clarke shifts her weight from one foot to the other and sighs. The barista calls out their drinks and they move forward in unison to grab and cap them before heading toward the door. “I think with you I—” Clarke drops her voice down to a normal level the second the door swings shut and muffles the noise from inside, “I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you, but it always felt like you had one foot out the door. I felt like if I locked it down, you know, got it on paper it would be real and you wouldn't be able to leave me.”

 

“Oh.” Chills slip through her skin, eely and cold and frightening, and Lexa looks over to Clarke, who's busy thumbing the sleeve on her coffee.

 

“Look what good that did me.”

 

They walk in silence for a few more steps before Clarke stops short in the middle of the sidewalk, and Lexa has to turn around to stay with her. “I just need to ask this once. Just once, and then I'm done.” Clarke takes a deep breath and lets it out and then says, “why did you leave me? Was it something I did? Did you fall out of love with me?”

 

Lexa can feel a burning behind her eyes, and she blinks a few times to try to clear the feeling away. It doesn't work. Because, what can she say? She knows she can't tell, she _knows_. “No, it wasn't you. I didn't stop loving you.”

 

“So, why?”

 

Lexa takes a deep breath and tries to find words, tries to figure out how best to explain. But nothing comes. “Let's not go down this road, Clarke. The past is the past.”

 

Clarke looks at her for a moment, eyes moist and pleading, before nodding and looking down to her latte. “Yeah. Right. Of course. We should just drop it.”

 


	6. these are a few of my favorite things

Lexa is enjoying a quiet morning in her office. There are people that have come by, of course, but she just sucks in her breath, watches the handle jiggle a bit, and waits for them to leave. It's working for her, surprisingly, given the fact that her office is never locked while she's in it. So, when it happens again—when the knob shakes and there's a little thump at the door where the person clearly tried to just walk right in without expecting it to be locked—she's not really worried. There's a pause, as there has been almost every time, then a knock and a familiar voice calling, “open the fucking door, Lexa.”

 

Lexa sighs and runs a hand through her hair, hackles raising at Anya swearing so loudly at work. That woman is going to be the death of her. Still, she briefly considers just riding out Anya's temper tantrum and staying locked in the room. It can't tarnish her reputation that much, can it? Then again, Anya knows where she lives and she wouldn't be able to avoid her forever. And she's not the one she's trying to hide from right now, either.

 

“I know you're in there. Probably avoiding your EX,” she raises her voice on the last word, and Lexa is up in a heartbeat, scrambling toward the door before Anya can finish her sentence, “Cla-” The door swings open and Lexa knows she looks disheveled—out of breath and frantic and all around pissed but she can't quite bring herself to care when Anya grins at her and says, “oh. Hey, Lexa.”

 

“What do you want, Anya?” Lexa snaps, heart still racing way beyond her control as she tries to convince her tensed muscles it's okay to relax. That no one heard anything. _The hallway is empty, the hallway is empty._

 

“Came by with the Kenney paper edits.” She says, waving a thick stack of papers in the air next to her head. “But it looks like you're too busy avoiding Clarke to care.”

 

“I'm not avoiding Clarke.” Lexa responds through grit teeth, walking back into her office and motioning for Anya to follow.

 

Anya does as indicated, shutting the door behind her delicately before settling herself in the chair on the other side of the desk while Lexa slides into her own. “Your door was locked.” She points out, raising an eyebrow. “You never lock your door.”

 

Lexa sighs, knowing she's been beat. “Yes. Okay, I was hiding.” She admits, leaning back in her chair and resting her cheek in her hand. “But it was the graduate students I was avoiding. Ever since Clarke offered me up to play point person for the FCDI, they've been all over me with questions.”

 

Anya chuckles, shrugging her shoulders nonchalantly. “Well, that's what you get for paying more attention to the speaker than her words, isn't it?”

 

Lexa feels defensiveness rise up in her, the words she wants to hurtle at Anya to protect her own honor getting jammed in her throat and, instead of making a sound that makes any sort of sense, lets out a strangled sort of groan and drops her head further into her hand. No matter how hard she rubs, though, she can't seem to ease the throbbing in her temples. She's just tired, so tired. She wishes she could sleep, wishes she could take some time to read a book for pleasure, or take a hike through the woods without taking endless measurements. She wishes she could just _exist_ for one moment without that nagging, either a person hassling her about something, or a reminder in the back of her head that she has a deadline approaching.

 

_A student made an appointment today at 1:00, can't be late._

 

_The Kenney paper is due Friday and it's nowhere near where it needs to be._

 

_Next week's lecture isn't going to prepare itself._

 

_Lincoln's research proposal is promising, but nothing can be done about it without more funding._

_  
Funding. Fuck. The FCDI._

 

_Oh Jesus, people relentlessly asking questions about the FCDI._

 

_They should really be asking Clarke._

 

_And also, of course, people relentlessly asking questions about Clarke._

 

“Lexa?” Anya asks, and suddenly that smirk is gone, replaced by a furrowed brow. Anya is _worried_. _Jesus._ How bad has it gotten?

 

Lexa waves a hand dismissively, and takes in a shuddering breath. “I'm fine. You're right. I should've been paying closer attention to what she was saying. And yet, she's the grant administrator, she's available. Why don't they ask her?”

 

Anya shrugs. “She's not their fearless leader.” That smirk is back now, teasing at the edges of Anya's lips, and it's an odd comfort for Lexa. Like the way she'd always imagined a mother's hug would feel.

 

“I'm not feeling so fearless right now.” Lexa groans and slouches back in her chair again. “I just want to have a day at home to finish all my projects. If I don't deal with it soon, the blackberry bush from hell is going to take over my yard again.”

 

Anya nods solemnly and places a hand over her heart. “Rest in peace, shovel. You fought valiantly, but in the end, the blackberries took you.”

 

Lexa lets out something between a sigh and a chuckle and schools her expression into stoicism. She leans forward and places a comforting hand on Anya's arm. “His fight is over now.”

 

Anya actually somehow manages to tear up, eyes glistening in a way they never do as she places her hand over Lexa's and sniffles loudly. Lexa's the first one to crack, and she laughs, pulling her hand back from Anya's grip. Anya joins in a second later, smiling and chuckling softly to herself.

 

“Seriously, though.” Anya says when she begins to recover, “don't let those blackberries get that bad again. Tris and I will help you cut them back. How about Saturday, after all this Kenney bullshit is over?”

 

“You're a lifesaver, Anya.” Lexa says, smiling softly at the woman who had guided her through the most difficult parts of her life.

  
Anya just smirks back (Lexa really shouldn't expect Anya to show more emotion for her than a broken shovel) .“Don't I know it.”

 

* * *

 

 

Clarke doesn't see Lexa all day. She doesn't see most people most days, actually, except for Indra and Octavia. Indra because the first step is going through the budget with her one-on-one, covering expectations for money, that sort of thing. Most people would find that kind of thing boring, but Clarke has always found a sort of peace in it. Everything has a place, everything adds up, there are strict ethical guidelines for how money will be used. Funds allocation is simple, a cost-benefit analysis, a balancing act. And when it works out well, there's really no better feeling.

 

Octavia she keeps seeing because, well, Octavia is Octavia and has so much energy and drive she does her work in half the time everybody else takes. The only person she's ever met with that kind of iron will and determination before is Lexa, and to this day it still bewilders her to no end.

 

“Don't you ever get tired, O?”

 

But Clarke's day is long over now, her belly is full of delicious food (nobody in DC can do pho quite like Seattle can) and mind fuzzy with the haze of the drink she and Octavia had grabbed combined with the glow of seeing a friend she'd missed dearly. She loves Octavia, but for the life of her, she can't understand why the hell she feels the need to be returning to the building at nine o'clock in the evening to grab some things she'd forgotten.

 

Octavia grins, shooting back, “nope, don't know the meaning of the word.” She punches the code into the door, then tugs on Clarke's arm to make her follow her in. “Relax, it'll only take a second then no more thinking about work until tomorrow. Promise.”

 

Clarke is too exasperated to sigh or roll her eyes or generally be impetuous about being here. Just a few minutes, then they'll have another drink and watch a stupid movie and then bed. _Mmm, bed._ Octavia opens the door to the graduate student lounge and flicks the light on, and the room grunts in disapproval, which is... unsettling. Clarke jumps, and Octavia laughs and places a hand on her shoulder.

 

“Relax, Clarke.” She waves toward the source of the sound, the crumpled figure now rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand and blinking against the bright fluorescent lighting. “It's just the only person who spends more time here than I do.”

 

“Hello, Octavia. Clarke.” Lexa says, voice raspy from sleep, and, yes. Okay. Of course Clarke finds it endearing. She rarely ever woke before Lexa, but on those rare occasions, it had felt like spotting an animal previously thought extinct. And, well, usually it had turned her on. Usually, Lexa had woke to kisses down her neck, a hand sliding up her stomach, hips grinding into her ass.

 

Nope. Stop right there, Clarke. Do not enter. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

 

“Hey.” Clarke responds, eyes flickering up to Lexa but finding it difficult to stay on her for very long without those thoughts coming back.

 

Octavia, who is probably far more amused by the two of them than she has any right to be, shakes her head at Clarke's shifting feet and distracted gaze and says “be right back, okay?” before disappearing into one of the offices.

 

Clarke knows she should sit. The flash of memory that had sparked in her before was still there, just slightly, lingering beneath her skin in a blush. But it's fading fast, and Clarke is trying to make this whole “friends with her ex” thing work, so she settles on the couch next to Lexa and clears her throat. “Aren't you a little old to still be sleeping on this thing?”

 

Lexa shrugs and stretches her shoulder, rolls her head around on her neck a bit. “Never too old to work yourself into the grave.” She volleys back, and Clarke smiles.

 

She smiles, but then she quickly averts her gaze back to the couch, to where her fingers are picking at a loose thread in the couch cover. “Please don't.” She says softly, looking back up to finally meet Lexa's eye. “I may not love you anymore, Lexa, but you're smart. The world needs you to help fix things.”

 

Something flashes in Lexa's eyes, and her lips twitch, but it all happens so fast Clarke can't tell if it's happy or sad. Lexa dips her head in a nod, but doesn't break eye contact with Clarke. And here's the thing: Lexa has beautiful eyes. But, it's more than that. Lexa's eyes are an interesting color, and they've got interesting speckles and swirls that Clarke could investigate for days but really, when it comes down to it, Clarke likes Lexa's eyes because if you can learn to speak their language, learn to listen to them, they give her away completely. The whole “eyes are the window to the soul” thing had always seemed like such a horrible cliché before she met Lexa. A million of Finn's spoken 'I love you's never come close to the way Lexa has always looked at her.

 

But back when they were together, that had never been enough. She wonders why, now. Why had she needed to hear it spoken aloud so badly? Is that what pushed Lexa away?

 

“I have something for you.” Lexa says, reaching down to the bag at her feet and pulling out a cylindrical something wrapped in twine and a ripped-apart paper bag. She hands it out to Clarke and she takes it, cradling it gingerly in her palms and running her thumbs over the edges.

 

“What is it?” Clarke asks, glancing back up to meet Lexa's raised eyebrow.

 

“I thought the point of a gift was that it's a surprise.” Lexa's lips curl into a smirk again and _damn it_ , Clarke loves those lips. Like, really a lot. Are her own lips chapped? They feel dry. Her tongue snakes out to wet them, and it sends a thrill through them, makes them tingle.

 

_Uh-oh._

 

“That's true,” Clarke says, feeling around the gift again, looking down at it so she stops looking at Lexa's lips, trying to distract herself by determining what the present is. “But you're terrible at surprises.”

 

Lexa chuckles and leans back against the arm of the couch, folding a leg up and over the other. “Maybe I've changed.”

 

Clarke is not convinced by that, not even a little. Lexa is the most rigid and inflexible person Clarke has ever met. It would take something earth-shattering to change her more than a little. Remembering that seems to help quell the feelings in her and she's grateful. Maybe she should make a list of things she hates about Lexa and carry that around with her, too. “Well, it feels like a mason jar.” She says, a little smirk coming to her own lips now, “and knowing you, that means it's probably actually food and not, like, a candle or hot chocolate mix or something like that.”

 

Lexa rolls her eyes. “Just open it, Clarke.”

 

“Well, if it is food,” Clarke starts, tearing the wrapping paper away as she talks, not really even paying attention to what she's doing because she's too busy raising a haughty eyebrow at Lexa, “it better be—” she looks down and a huge, not-even-a-little-snarky, totally-and-completely-honest grin takes over her face. She lets out a swooning sigh and holds the jar to her chest. “Garlic scapes.” She finishes with a dreamy lilt to her voice.

 

“I had some canned from June when I cut them to encourage—“ Lexa pauses in realization then laughs at herself, “you don't care, do you?”

 

Clarke bites her lip and shakes her head sheepishly, though the grin on her face is still just as huge as it was before. “Not really.” She reaches up a hand to rest on Lexa's knee in what she hopes is a way that conveys how true her next word is. “Sorry.”

 

Lexa looks down at the hand on her knee briefly and swallows, then refocuses on Clarke's face “It's fine. The point is, I know they're your favorite. Happy belated birthday.”

 

Lexa remembered her birthday. Clarke doesn't actually find that all too surprising, yet at the same time she can't quite seem to stem the swell of her heart at that notion, can't stop herself from feeling grateful to Lexa for her thoughtfulness. Lexa could be distant, at times, so occupied with work and school that she wasn't around. Sometimes, she last minute canceled anniversary plans or worked herself so hard she was too tired for sex for weeks straight—weeks that drove Clarke up the walls. But she always bounced back from it with something small, something sweet. A potted flower (because Clarke loves them, but Lexa is absolutely befuzzled by the idea of keeping dead plants in your house--'what's romantic about dying flowers?'), a picnic under the stars, taking a day off (which she pretty much never did unless she was literally in the hospital) to spend with Clarke.

 

“You didn't have to do this, Lex.” She says softly, looking down at the jar in her hands. She can't look at Lexa now, she _can't_. It seems funny, that remembering the good parts of their relationship could hurt so much. That Lexa's care and sweetness could make her want to cry, and not in the happy way, either.

 

_Why did you have to leave me?_

 

“I know.” Lexa responds, watching her with furrowed brows, with concern she has no fucking right to feel. Lexa has no right to make Clarke care about her again. “I wanted to.” Lexa's hand covers Clarke's, forces her attention up to Lexa's eyes.

 

Clarke can feel the tears in her own, can feel how they're building so rapidly, she's not sure she'll be able to stop them. She swallows, trying to answer the question in Lexa's eyes that are so, so soft and so, so broken, and she has no right—no _right_ , damn it, to be soft or sad or broken. It's not _fair_. She left Clarke, she just _left her._ Without an explanation, without any warning, no slow falling out of love period that made it feel like it was for the best, no warning signs or red flags, she was just... gone one day. She opens her mouth, looks for the words.

 

_Why did you have to leave me?_

 

“Is everything all right in here?” Octavia's standing at the door to the office with a thumb drive in her hand, a frown on her lips, and wary, barely-contained aggression flashing in her eyes.

 

Clarke wipes at her eyes with the back of her hands. She's pretty sure she didn't actually let any of them fall, but she's still terrified that it'll be obvious, that Octavia will know. She clears her throat and turns, “everything's fine. Let's go.” She stands, catches Lexa's eye—back to their normal distance, back to being opaque—and says, “thanks for the garlic scapes.”

 

Lexa nods and Octavia says her goodbye to her faculty mentor and Clarke and Octavia make their way out of the building. Once they're a few paces out, Octavia musters her courage and asks, “do you want to talk about it?”

 

Clarke isn't afraid to acknowledge her feelings, not really. She could tell Octavia everything that's been going on the past six months, about what's been going on with her and Lexa, but she doesn't. Not because she doesn't want Octavia to know, but simply because she doesn't feel it, not really. She doesn't feel much of anything right now. Just the heft of the jar in her hand and the warmth of Octavia to her right, and the misting of rain on her cheeks and clinging to her hair. “No, not really.”

 

Octavia shoves her hands into her coat pockets and slides another worried glance Clarke's way. “Okay. I'm here if you need me.”

 

“I know.” She does her best to muster a smile for her friend. “Thanks.”

 

* * *

 

 

Clarke is nervous. She can't remember the last time she was quite this nervous, actually, which somehow compounds things and makes the feeling worse. She wants to turn around, to go back to her hotel and forget about it, but she's been lying in bed for hours now trying to sleep and she _can't_. Every night this week, she's been plagued by something—thoughts that won't stop circling in her exhausted mind and, worse, dreams about Lexa that bleed into the reality of her every day life the past week—and she just wants to sleep. Lexa can give her that, owes her that.

 

The door opens and there she is, in sweatpants and a wool cardigan, looking confused in the adorable way only someone who is always so sure of herself can be.

 

“Clarke? How do you know where I live?”

 

The windows are steamed up and it makes the whole room glow, makes the whole house seem cozy and lived-in and it surprises her a little, that she's not surprised at all. Most people think of Lexa as cold and hard. She remembers the surprise of any of her friends that saw her apartment (few ever had the privilege), remembers how they thought it would be all ikea furniture and metal and polished polished polished.

  
But it's not—Lexa's not. Instead, it's thrift store furniture and the smell of home cooking and its warmth seeps it's way into Clarke's bones, makes her feel utterly and completely... in place. Her nerves are still buzzing below her skin, but there's something in her that feels settled here, too. Like she should be here.

 

“It was in your file.”

 

Lexa smiles, and laughs, and says, “that's creepy.”

 

“Yeah. It's weird, I know.” Clarke concedes with an eye roll. This is too easy, she can't let it lull her into forgetting why she's here. “Can I come in?”

 

Lexa stares at her for a moment that feels like forever before nodding and stepping aside, implicitly granting her access to the house.

 

Clarke follows her into the house, hit suddenly with an actual heat that soothes the chill of the autumn night. “It's warm in here.” She notes, then feels stupid for stating the obvious and follows it up with “I thought heating in fall and winter was a waste of energy.” She clicks her tongue. “Bad for the environment, Lexa.”

 

Lexa chuckles, “it is. The heat's not on.” She motions to the stove, still lit up to let her know the burner is hot, to the line of jars piled up on the counter next to it. “I was getting some more canning done.”

 

Clarke nods. “Oh. Of course.”

 

Lexa sucks her lips into her mouth for a second, tilts her head a bit as she studies Clarke's face, then finally apparently decides to go with, “would you like a drink?”

 

Clarke thinks she probably shouldn't. She's here for a very particular reason, and that reason is not to get drunk with Lexa. At the same time, alcohol has a way of loosening lips and that's exactly what Clarke needs right now—for Lexa to talk, for her to finally admit what's really going on. So she agrees with a smile and Lexa walks over to the pantry to retrieve a bottle of wine and uncork it with her typical swiftness and lack of flourish.

 

Clarke takes the opportunity to look around the house. There are bookshelves—so many, Clarke has never understood how it's possible for a person to own so many of them, much less so many that are non-fiction—and a little hallway that leads to three doors. The kitchen, and living room are all connected, with a table shoved into the corner where they bleed together to make a makeshift dining room. The living room is pretty much just an old couch, a cozy-looking armchair and a fireplace. The thing that really stands out, though, is the kitchen. Mainly, that it's easily the biggest room in the house. The counters stretch on for forever, all situated around a sink and refrigerator along one wall and a huge gas range along the other. Cast iron pans and impressively honed kitchen knives hang along the walls, ready to be used at a moment's notice. The counters are all wood, covered in scored marks where Lexa must have cut vegetables on them.

 

“I was just looking up at the stars.” Lexa says, breaking Clarke from her examination, making her jump a little. “Join me?”

 

Clarke is surprised, but she nods, anyway. It had been a cold night, but a clear one. She remembers how unpredictable fall in Seattle could be. And she hasn't looked at the stars in so long.

 

Lexa leads Clarke out into the backyard. The huge backyard. The one full of trees and garden beds, and plants that obscure the yard from any neighbors, making it private and cozy. Somehow the fact that Lexa's yard is larger than her house warms Clarke's heart. She follows to where there's a blanket spread out on the grass.

 

Lexa lays out on the blanket and Clarke follows suit, sitting up on her elbows so she can take a long drag of the wine offered to her. “God, I forgot you can see the stars here when it's clear.” Lexa smiles over at her, taking a sip of the wine and handing it back. “It's gorgeous. I missed them.”

 

“It's even better out in the Olympics.” There's a brief moment where she grinds her jaw, pauses to think a while. “I wish you would've come with me, I still think you'd like it.”

 

Clarke hums non-commitally—after all, she's a city kid; always has been, always will be—and takes in the brilliant night. The moon isn't out in full force tonight, it's a crescent, thin and waning, but it's still beautiful. She knows Lexa has always loved the moon, has always lived by it. Lexa doesn't have a lot of irrational beliefs, but the full moon still makes her uneasy around people, still draws her out to stare, is still a time of energy and creation. Likewise, the new moon has always been a time of quiet reflection. “There's supposed to be a blood moon soon.”

 

“Yes, I heard.” Lexa's speaking formally, which Clarke knows means she's nervous. She's a little glad, honestly, that she can make Lexa nervous still, that the feeling is mutual. It also makes her sad, makes her wish she could have Lexa fully again, makes her wish things didn't have to be weird between them. She _misses_ Lexa, she can admit that, can't she? Maybe it's the wine, but that seems like a concession she can afford. She doesn't need her, doesn't love her, and there are plenty of things she most decidedly doesn't miss, but they'd been together for a reason, right?

 

Clarke takes a sip of wine to give her mouth something to do while she thinks of a way to keep Lexa talking. “Your birthday's coming up.” Clarke says, and Lexa looks utterly surprised. That makes Clarke sad, too, that Lexa would think she'd forget, especially after Lexa had taken such care to remember hers. Clarke was always better with those little things, the names and dates, anniversaries and birthdays.

 

“Yes.”

Clarke had forgotten how hard having a conversation with Lexa is—even small talk like this. “Are you gonna do anything fun?” She's still determined as all hell to do it anyway.

 

“Yes, a quiet evening in, if all goes according to plan.”

 

Clarke is flabbergasted at this (though, also, not really at all), and shakes her head. “You seriously aren't gonna do anything? Hang out with Anya?”

 

And then Lexa does something Clarke really doesn't expect. She bristles. Her shoulders hunch up and her jaw clenches, and she completely shuts down, the ease of the moment slips away as naturally as it had come.

 

She responds in typical Lexa fashion, short and to the point and utterly devoid of elaboration. “I enjoy being alone.”

 

So, that's new. Lexa and Anya had been nearly inseparable when Clarke had met them. Anya was Lexa's sole confidant and best friend, the general to her president. But, she's seen Lexa shut down before and pushing the issue is never helpful when it happens. So, she backs down. She lets it go. Well, she tries.

  
“You should let me buy you a birthday dinner.” Clarke chances, watching Lexa out of the corner of her eye, taking another sip from the wine bottle.

 

Lexa chuckles and shakes her head. “You don't need to do that.”

 

Clarke wishes Lexa was the sort of person to refuse out of politeness, but knows she's not. Knows that this no is a kind form of rejection. She tries to think of some way to insist that won't ruin their comraderie and can't, so she stays quiet instead.

 

Lexa's wistful gaze returns to the sky and again Clarke follows her lead. They stay like that, comfortable in their shared moment of awe at the beauty of it. Clarke can feel Lexa next to her, is so aware of her, of the brush of their fingers when they pass the bottle back and forth, of Lexa's deep, settled breathing, of the way the starlight makes Lexa's skin glow, casts beautifully mysterious shadows across her face, and her contentment grows again. She finally lets herself settle all the way onto the ground, resting her hand next to Lexa's so that their pinkies brush and Lexa's breathing stutters. She likes that. That little hitch of her breath, the way Lexa's staring at the stars now not because she wants to, but because she's trying so hard not to acknowledge it.

 

Lexa clears her throat and raises herself up onto her elbows again, using the hand Clarke had brushed to point out a cluster of stars. (Clarke definitely doesn't feel disappointed by that, not at all). “That's your favorite, right?”

 

“Yeah,” Clarke smiles, getting back up as well, and Lexa's refusal, the way she's been subtly pushing Clarke away all night, gets shoved to the back of her mind to be analyzed later.. “The seven sisters.”

 

“Why do you like them?” Lexa's still not looking at her, but she looks free, looks happy, like whatever shadow had passed over her earlier had dissipated like morning fog and Clarke can't help but feel that part of that happiness is her own doing. She hopes it is, at least.

 

She rolls her eyes, anyway. For old time's sake. “You know why, I've told you this story a hundred times.”  
  
Lexa looks at her—looks soft, looks pliant, looks _eager_. “Tell me again.”

 

“It's not even a good reason.” Clarke laughs and Lexa smiles and she's so amazing in that moment. Amazing, because she's told Lexa so many times but she's never looked at the stars with Finn before. Sure, they've bonded over books in a way she and Lexa would never be able to, but the stars, the forest, the feeling of a leaf under her fingertips—these things are all the little secrets she and Lexa had built up over the years. They feel like secrets, at least, just between the two of them, even now. She lets out an exaggerated sigh and decides to indulge Lexa's request. “I was an only child. I remember one time I was stargazing with my dad and I pointed to that cluster and asked him what it was called. I was maybe seven or eight, and so I knew a few constellations—the big dipper and Orion's belt—but I didn't know much else. He told me it was called the seven sisters, and I immediately fell in love with them, because I'd always wanted siblings as a child, especially a sister.”

 

She looked back down and Lexa was looking at her again, the way she used to when they were together. With so much emotion in her eyes it used to make Clarke squirm with the overwhelming feeling of being absolutely and totally adored. She takes another long drink of wine, sets the bottle back in the grass and then returns to Lexa's gaze. It's powerful and magnetic and everything it's always been, and she wonders if it would be so bad to kiss her right now. Nobody would have to know, just her and Lexa and the stars. Instead, she clears her throat and looks back up to the seven sisters, her constant guides.

 

Her guides. She can't lose sight of her mission, no matter how inviting Lexa's lips are right now. And she definitely can't get caught up in Lexa without knowing the truth. AND she has a boyfriend. “Lexa, I—I lied. On Monday, after the coffee shop. I can't drop it.” Lexa's face falls, and all of that youthful adoration slips away with it. “Why did you leave me? I need to know so I can lay it all to rest.”

 

Lexa drops back down onto her back with a long sigh. “People here needed me.”

 

Clarke sits up fully and swallows, her chest roiling. If Lexa wants a fight about this, Clarke will give her one. “What does that even mean, Lexa?”

 

Lexa, on the other hand, doesn't sit up. She doesn't really react at all. She looks... exhausted, to be honest. Disappointed and beaten down. “It means people here needed me.”

 

Clarke's jaw clenches. She's tired of not sleeping, of wondering, of the push-pull of affection and repulsion. She wants to know, _needs_ to know. “You're really not gonna give me anymore than that?”

 

“No.”

 

Clarke waits a couple beats, considers pushing more, but all the affection she'd been feeling just moments earlier has melted down into molten anger and instead she rises to her feet. “Thanks for the wine.” She snaps, then stomps off. She pauses at the door, doesn't have to turn to know Lexa's a few feet behind her. “I was really hoping we could be adults about this.” Then she walks away and doesn't stop scowling until she's back in her car. Then and only then does she let the tears that have been waiting in her eyes all week fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, thanks for your comments and kudos, they're so appreciated. to all of you who wanted an update--ask and you shall receive. also, i've been thinking a lot about astrological signs (obvs) and here's what i've got so far, let me know if you agree?
> 
> clarke-virgo  
> lexa-scorpio  
> octavia-taurus or aries, haven't decided. maybe taurus sun with an aries moon?  
> monty-cancer  
> jasper-leo  
> anya-doesn't give a fuck about astrological signs and will kill anybody who tries to talk to her about it  
> bellamy-not sure about this one, honestly. maybe leo, also?
> 
>  
> 
> anyway, as always, let me know what you think of this chapter, yeah? liking the way it's going?


	7. sleepover story

“Don't do it that way.” Anya says, grabbing for the shovel in Lexa's hands, reaching out to stop her before she can lean her weight onto it to try to dig out the roots. “That's how we lost the last one, remember?”

 

It's a nice day, unusually clear again somehow but cold (always the trade-off, that), and Lexa can see little puffs of her breath clouding in front of her in the bright sunshine that bathes them. She's working up a sweat in spite of the cold, working quietly beside an affectionately bickering Anya and Tris, doing her best to focus on the task at hand.

 

She barely registers that Anya has spoken to her until her hand lands on Lexa's arm, and she jerks it away immediately. “That shovel was old,” she snaps, annoyance rising in her. “This one's new. It's strong.”

 

Anya cocks an eyebrow at her, shifting her hands to her hips. “Yeah, well, it wouldn't have to be strong if you would just do it the right way in the first place.”

 

Lexa shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath and grinds out, “I think I know how to take out a plant, Anya. I have a godd—” She cuts herself off when she realizes Tris has stopped what she's doing, instead training an interested gaze on the two adults in front of her. “I have a doctorate in this, remember?”

 

Anya snorts and shakes her head. “No, you have a doctorate in all the science-y bullshit that makes plants tick. _I_ on the other hand have been landscaping since I was a kid.”

 

Lexa frowns, knows there's more words she wants to say, knows she could snap back, but Tris' gaze is still intently on them, and the girl needs a good role model. Anyone can tell Anya sure as hell isn't one. “Okay.” She sighs, “I don't want to fight about this.”

 

Anya narrows her eyes and watches Lexa for a few more seconds, then, without turning to her daughter, says “Tris, go get us some water. I'm thirsty.”

 

Lexa nearly groans and sags to her knees in frustration. She knows this means there'll be more talking about things without actually talking about them. Anya doesn't admit to having feelings, which means the simple “you hurt my feelings” that could end this whole thing isn't likely to come out of her mouth. Tris reluctantly heads up toward the house, casting her eyes back every so often to see if they're at each other's throats yet.

 

Once she's back in the house, Anya straightens and leans her weight onto her shovel. “All right, what crawled up your ass and died?” It's funny because, as tough as Anya is trying to be right now, as tough as she  _is_ , Lexa really can't take her seriously when she's wearing neon orange and blue floral print gardening gloves.

 

She stifles the laugh at the sight—Anya, in a paint-splattered old hoodie she'd won from a shitty dive bar they used to go to as kids, with her dark eyeliner and heavy bags under her eyes, with her tight lips and disinterested gaze, her high, sharp cheekbones smeared with dirt and sweat—and her old lady gloves.

 

“Nothing.” She says, turning as if she's going to return to work, mostly to avoid letting Anya onto the fact she was laughing at her.

 

“Bullshit.”

 

Lexa pauses, thinks about ignoring her, and gets about halfway through digging out the roots of the particular branch she's attacking before saying with Anya still watching her intently, waiting with more patience than she has for most things. “Clarke came by yesterday.”

 

Anya doesn't say anything, just watches with what Lexa doesn't have to look to know is a disapproving gaze at her technique, as she leans on her shovel and wipes at her sweat-slick forehead with the back of her arm. There's a few beats of silence, the two of them both trying to wait out the other, locked in a ceaseless battle of wills that began the day they first met. Anya cracks first.

 

“And?”

 

Lexa sighs, pressing the shovel back into the dirt with all the strength she's capable of exerting, trying with everything she has to burn off the excess energy Clarke's visit left her with before Anya notices it humming along her skin and making her fingers twitch. She thinks for a minute of telling Anya about the way Clarke had brushed her fingers along Lexa's, of the way her eyes had kept flickering to her lips, of the anguish she'd felt when Clarke had stormed out and slammed the door, of knowing there was not a single thing Lexa could say to ease her mind. Instead, she sticks to the facts, the observable, the knowable. “She keeps asking why I stayed in Seattle.” The break in conversation is no longer a patient or thoughtful pause on Anya's part—Lexa knows better than to think that—now it's a holding of breath, the uncertain moment before disclosure that feels like a lifetime. Lexa doesn't want to give her the satisfaction of answering without making her ask.

 

“Did you tell her?” Anya asks, her eyes sharp and searing on the side of Lexa's head. It's not a question, it's an accusation, and Lexa bristles at the implication.

 

“Of course not.” She snaps back, eyes flickering over to where Tris is walking back out of the house with three glasses balanced in her hands—still small but growing with every passing day, so rapidly it makes Lexa's head spin. “I told her people here needed me.”

 

Anya shoves her own shovel into the dirt now, needing to distract her wildly beating heart from the scare that had provoked it. “What did she say?”

 

“Essentially? That I'm an asshole.” Tris nears some more, and Lexa just shrugs, trying to play off their conversation like it was nothing to keep Tris' interest at a minimum despite the feeling that her heart is cracking and bleeding out into her chest. “The usual, nothing I can't handle.” She smiles at Tris when she hands her a water and immediately she goes to chug it down, letting some spill down her cheeks and onto her t-shirt, the cloth there already damp and sticking from sweat.

 

Anya just watches her, thumbing at the lip of her own glass, before finishing off with, “whatever you say, Lexa.”

 

They take a short break where Tris regales them with tales from school and Lexa and Anya listen attentively while simultaneously downing their glasses of water. Anya's eyes keep skittering from Lexa to Tris and back, and Lexa can feel her wariness, her lack of trust. It makes her skin crawl. Tris goes back to gardening and eventually, Anya chimes back in.

 

“You made your choice, Lex.' She says under her breath, standing next to Lexa so that only she can hear her muttering. “You left her. Now you live with it.”

 

Lexa hesitates in what she's doing for a moment, brow furrowing at the ground in front of her before she finally replies, “I did what I had to.”

 

Anya chuckles and shakes her head. “You had a choice and you made it.”

“You didn't leave me any other choice but the one I made.”

 

Anya pauses and raises an eyebrow, and Lexa pretends she doesn't see it. “Don't blame me for this, Lexa. You knew what you were signng up for.”

 

Tris hadn't stopped hacking at the roots with her pickaxe, but she had slowed enough that Lexa knew she was listening to them with veiled interest, having learned that they would notice her watching them. “Sure, Anya. Whatever you say.”

 

* * *

 

“I'm sorry you're having a shitty time, babe.” Finn's voice is rough in the way it is when he's just woken up from sleep, and Clarke thinks she should tease him about it somehow. It's nearing the end of her morning and he's three hours ahead of her and still only now waking up. He's always been a bit of a teenager in his sleeping habits, and it only gets worse when Clarke is out of town and not around to keep him to a more adult schedule. “Maybe you should just stay away from her.”

 

Clarke sighs and leans her head back against her desk chair. “You know I can't do that.”

 

“Can't or won't?” His voice is terse now, snapped awake, and Clarke bristles.

 

“Both.” She says back, just because she knows she's found a sore spot and he's pissing her off and she wants to rub it in as hard as she can to let him know he crossed a line and should turn back if he likes the idea of having a peaceful conversation. And a girlfriend.

 

Clarke's in her temporary office, one designated for a post-grad who still technically works with the lab but lives full time in northern California and never uses it, going over page after page of numbers—budgets and expense reports and receipts—giving half her attention to the computer and half to the conversation she's having on the phone.

 

“Fine. Okay. Whatever. Just, I don't understand why it's so important for you to know why she didn't move with you.” She can hear the sound of their keurig machine in the background, the hiss and grumble of it as it finishes a cup of coffee, then the gentle click of the mug getting set on the counter. “It's been like five years.”

 

Her jaw clenches and she snatches up a pen in the hand that had been manning the mouse, ignoring the computer altogether in favor of clicking the pen open and shut over and over and over again. “I just want a little closure.”

 

“And _I_ just don't understand why the fact that it's been over for five years isn't closure enough.”

 

Just then, a man's head pops into the open doorway, a warm smile overtaking his face immediately when he sees her, the rest of his body appearing shortly after. He looks young, she thinks, small. Though she's not sure if that's because he actually is or if it's because he's one of the few people on this campus who seems to have retained his optimism and sunny personality. She'd never realized it before, but academia seemed to attract the sullen, brooding type. Either that, or it worked the happiness right out of them.

 

“Hi.” He says, smile only growing in the short pause between his first word and his second. “You must be Clarke.”

 

“Finn, I gotta go.” She'd paused when he'd appeared, and now she took the time to drop her phone on the desk and lean back in her chair, her shoulders immediately thankful for not being hunched over anymore. “Uh, yeah.” She replies, not able to muster a smile of her own, her fingers landing on the edge of the desk, finding the smooth counter oddly comforting beneath them. She's not anti-social necessarily, but these moments without scripts, without precedent still make her nervous.

 

He strides forward into the office, hand held out proudly in front of him. “Nice to meet one of the crew.” He beams, and Clarke is just about to tell him she has no idea who he is when another person comes around the corner, looking even younger than the last, all lanky and messy hair and a toothy grin.

 

“Did you find her?” The new boy asks, his eyes flickering around the office before settling on Clarke, his eyes widening in a way Clarke didn't think people's eyes did outside of cartoons. “Whoa, dude. She's smoking. Why didn't you tell me she was hot?”

 

“I—” Clarke starts to speak, but the first man beats her to it, turning to his friend and clicking his tongue disapprovingly.

  
“ _Dude._ ” Is all he says, reproach heavy in his tone, but his friend doesn't seem to notice or care, because he's stepping in, grinning like he thinks he's fucking Don Juan and holding his hand out, leaning an elbow on the desk.

  
“My name's Jasper, but you can call me whatever you want.” He winks at her—actually fucking winks at her, Clarke didn't know people actually did that anymore. Has no one ever told him that's not cute? How has no one ever told him that before?

 

As much as she wants to, she doesn't get the chance to be the one to do so, because then there's another person rounding the corner into her office, and doesn't anyone knock anymore? She can go days in here without seeing a single soul except for Indra or Octavia on rare occasions, when did her office become a heavy traffic zone?

 

“That's more than enough, Mr. Jordan.” Lexa snaps, grabbing him by the ear and dragging him away from Clarke's desk, the boy wincing and whining until she has him at the threshold.

 

“Hey! _Hey!_ Haven't you ever heard of assault, Woods?” He huffs, rubbing at his ear when she releases him, a childish pout on his face.

 

“Yes, I've also heard of sexual harassment. The department doesn't need any more trouble from you on that front.” She growls, taking a step into his space and making him swallow thickly and take a step back from her. Clarke had forgotten how authoritative Lexa could be, of how downright _scary_ she could be. It's sort of... hot?

 

No. No, Clarke doesn't find anything about Lexa hot. She doesn't like Lexa, doesn't care about Lexa, is utterly put out by having to interact with her at all. “It's fine.” She says, but instead of seeming relieved, the other man—not-Jasper—just sighs and shakes his head.

 

“No, it's not.” Lexa throws over her shoulder, turning her attention back to Jasper. “Apologize.”

 

He swallows, eyes flickering from Lexa to Clarke like Clarke will save him. And she's tempted to, honestly, the look of pure fear and horror in his eyes has a little twinge of sympathy lighting up in her chest, but she knows well enough that there's not a damn thing in the world that will get Lexa off the warpath once she's on it except getting her way, and she's already gotten into one fight today.

 

When it becomes painfully obvious no one is going to come to his rescue, he lets out a little huff, looks down to the ground and mutters out, “sorry.”

 

“It's okay.” She says again, trying to infuse her smile with as much kindness as she can for the poor kid.

 

“Good. Now let's try that introduction again.” Lexa orders, and Jasper shoves his hands into his pockets and kicks at the floor for a minute, obviously defeated and not even able to pretend he has a shred of dignity left.

 

“Hi, I'm Jasper, I'm your IT guy.” He mutters.

 

“Good boy.” Lexa says with a roll of her eyes, then hooks her thumb toward the door. “Now get back to work.” He disappears down the hall, Lexa hanging in the doorway and watching him go until he gets far enough away, then she turns and looks directly at the man left in the room. “Boys.” The very corner of one of her lips twitches into a smirk just as she finishes with, “I don't understand the appeal.”

 

He just sighs and shakes his head again. “Logically speaking, neither do I. Physically?” He shrugs, “there's just something about 'em.”

 

There's a lull and Clarke sees her chance to chew Lexa out (a chance worth taking whenever it arises, without a doubt). “You didn't have to be so mean to him, Lexa.”

 

“No, he had it coming.” Not-Jasper steps in before Lexa has the chance to defend herself. “That's not the first time he's crossed that line.”

 

“Whatever.” Clarke mutters, not letting her gaze waver from Lexa. Knowing she's being petulant and not caring. “Was there a reason you're here or were you just hovering by my door waiting to play feminist anti-hero?” It's a little harsh, and it's a risk being so boldly rude in front of this man, a wildcard in how unknown he is—she doesn't know anything about him except he's apparently gay and on friendly terms with Lexa—but it's worth it when Lexa looks caught off guard for just a second, her mouth opening and then snapping shut again right away.

 

“I was coming to talk to you when I saw Mr. Jordan enter your office.” She finally musters in response, clearly a bit flustered, clearly a bit _embarrassed_ (or as embarrassed as Lexa is capable of being).

 

“I should go.” The stranger says, watching them with soft eyes and a mouth pressed into a jagged line.

 

“No, I will.” Lexa says, sending a kind, small smile to her friend, then casting a final glance to Clarke that's utterly unreadable. “We can talk later.” She leaves a gaping hole in the room when she goes, like the space her presence had taken in the conversation was tangible, was grounding the two strangers left in the room in something familiar and comfortable.

 

Clarke clears her throat, and the man smiles shyly and rubs at the back of his neck. “So,” she starts, “what do you do around here?”

 

“Oh!” His face lights up and he lurches forward, holding his hand out for Clarke to take firmly in her own. “I'm Monty, I'm the grant administrator for NSF that's stationed here at the University.”

 

Ah. Well, all this makes a whole hell of a lot more sense now. “Pleasure to meet you, Monty.”

 

* * *

 

“Finn, I gotta go.” And then nothing. He sighs and places his phone down on the counter, leans on it and takes a sip of his rapidly cooling coffee, the steam still billowing off it tickling at his nose. Clarke thinks he doesn't know, thinks he doesn't remember the way she gets around Lexa. The way everything else seems to fade and all she can focus on is whatever emotion Lexa seems to be rousing in her at the moment. She doesn't remember that he's met the woman, in real life.

 

And he's not particularly inclined to tell her.

 

He was visiting his then-girlfriend Raven in college, before their long-distance relationship got too messy and hard and they broke up. Raven had introduced him to her roommate, Clarke—a pretty blonde girl with a nice smile and iron determination. Even then, he'd thought that Clarke was enchanting, though at the time he'd been much less interested in waxing poetic about her beauty. Instead, both he and Clarke had let Raven drag them to some frat party where girls got in for free, and they'd been able to pool their funds to make it almost absurdly cheap between the three of them to get absolutely hammered.

 

What is college for, right?

 

Anyway, he'd quietly spent the beginning of the evening watching Clarke's mouth, the way it seemed to naturally curve down, as though she'd been born with a permanent pout, a permanent _frown_. There were moments, of course, when it reversed, when something made her smile and she lit up, and J _esus_ , to this day he remembers the way that smile made him feel the first few times he saw it. But her mouth never quite did anything like it did when her eyes alit on a woman standing across the room from them, and she nearly splintered the plastic cup in her hand her grip tightened so hard so fast. It wasn't a good thing, either, no brilliant smile. Her lips pressed together and the muscles in her jaw twitched and jumped, and little creases folded around her lips, as though they wanted to make extra sure everyone knew just how displeased she was.

 

“What the hell is she doing here?” Clarke had asked—no, hissed—at Raven, who had just rolled her eyes, and responded with something flip.

  
Something like, “I don't know, drinking? Like the rest of us?”

 

And Finn had leaned over and asked Raven, “who's that?” Because, yeah, as much as he'd later find out he wasn't particularly a fan of the woman, she'd caught his eye, too. Pretty, full lips and bones that cut high arches underneath smoky, ambiguous eyes. She was gorgeous.

 

Raven was shaking her head as she joined in staring at the woman across the way. “That, Finn, is Lexa Woods, the bane of Clarke's existence.”

Clarke scoffed. “That's a little dramatic, don't you think?” But before Raven could respond, she jumped, almost hiding behind her friend and whispering sharply, “oh, shit. She saw me, she's coming over. Shit! Doesn't she have a sweaty basement to drink PBR in or something?”

 

Raven had just rolled her eyes. “Yeah, you're totally cool about this, Griffin.”

 

“Hello, Clarke.” And maybe it's just the time and the lingering threat of her presence, but he remembers even her voice being other-worldly smooth. She acted like a goddess, like she didn't quite belong on this earth, at this party, like all the pathetic little humans around her were downright boring. She acted like her feet didn't touch the floor when she walked.

 

“Hey.” Clarke had crossed her arms and cocked a hip out to the side—what he would later learn meant she was frustrated and angry and wanted the other person to know it. Lexa didn't seem at all phased by her frigidity. “What are you doing here? I thought parties were beneath you unless there's a shitty punk band that no one cares about playing.”

 

Lexa shrugged, looked around the room. Couldn't seem to be bothered with caring about Clarke's feelings in the least, didn't seem to notice the way she was broadcasting them with neon lights right in Lexa's face. “Anya's trying to hook up with some beefhead frat boy, and I figured I might as well make the most of it. See if I can do my duty and turn some straight sorority girls.”

 

Clarke scoffed, but she didn't make eye contact with Lexa when she retorted, “oh please. You're not _that_ good.”

 

Lexa's lips pulled up into the slightest smirk when she responded matter-of-factly, “yes, I am.” Then, almost like it was an afterthought and not devastatingly precise, she added, “at least with you, I am.”

 

And he remembers—that's the worst thing, is he remembers with _such fucking clarity—_ exactly how Clarke responded. Well, not in words, not necessarily. Her words were something like “just stay away from me.” But her body—she jolted, jumped, clenched. Her breath stuttered and caught in her throat. Her eyes trailed down to Lexa's lips and drank them in, and he knew in that moment that whatever sort of torch he was carrying for his girlfriend's pretty blonde friend was absolutely and totally useless because this girl was head-over-heels-gay-in-love with the woman in front of her. And suddenly Raven's annoyance with the whole situation became less murky. She was usually so devoted to her friends that not supporting their dislike for someone was damn near unthinkable. But in that moment, it was so clear.

 

Clarke was obsessed.

 

And that was just what Finn saw. Because what he didn't see, well, that was even more telling. What he didn't see was, after he and Raven had sneaked away to smoke a joint and make out in the backyard and Clarke had been left to dance off some of her drunkenness, she'd seen Lexa. Lexa, on the dance floor with another girl. Lexa, with her hand on that girl's thigh, trailing it up, up, up a short skirt right there in front of everyone. She would've made it to her goal, too, if Clarke hadn't grabbed her, said “we need to talk,” and dragged her into an empty room.

 

If Clarke hadn't shoved Lexa up against that door, leaned in and murmured, “I want to be the one you touch,” her hand trailing up the back of Lexa's thigh to her ass, “who touches you.”

 

If Lexa hadn't taken Clarke home, knowing she was drunk and with her sober consent for drunken booty calls, maybe she'd never have woken up the next morning and made that mix tape. Because, you see, when they'd gotten back to Lexa's empty apartment and had fallen into bed, Clarke had tried to fuck Lexa. And, really, it was a valiant effort for someone reduced to the motor skills of a five year old. But what ended up happening was Clarke fell asleep, and Lexa lay there, with Clarke's fingers curled inside her, shuddering at the feeling—at the intimacy of it, at how good it felt to just have Clarke there, filling her, sleeping beside her.

 

“Clarke.” She'd whispered out the words, trembling not because she was particularly turned on, but because she wasn't sure when she'd get the chance to say this again. Clarke continued to sleep, her breath blowing the hair on Lexa's shoulder into her neck and tickling her. “Clarke, I'm falling for you.” Lexa said again, even quieter this time in her fear that she might wake Clarke up. But Clarke just burrowed in harder against her shoulder and let out a little contented hum.

 

And when Finn woke up the next day, Clarke was in the kitchen, making bacon and eggs and drinking a tall glass of orange juice.

 

And when Lexa woke up the next day, she was alone in bed. She got up and wandered around the apartment, but there was no Clarke. Not in the bathroom or the kitchen or the hallway. It washed over her, then, the contrast. How sleeping with Clarke beside her had changed her, irrevocably. There was no going back now, not without this emptiness inside her, not without the fear that she'd let one of the greatest opportunities of her life pass her by. She picked up her phone and called Anya.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't know how happy i am with this chapter, honestly, but hopefully you enjoyed it. also, sorry for the wait life is super busy, you know the drill. also also, i have a tumblr or something, come talk to me and tell me what the hell i'm supposed to be doing with it and tell me how frustrated you are with these two idiots. pmonkey816.tumblr.com


	8. ahoy, thar be smut ahead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahoy, thar be light smut ahead, you've been warned.

Monty's company was nice, Clarke liked him. He was quiet, not in the sense that he didn't speak, just in the way some people have of not raising their voices any louder than they have to be, not seeking attention, not preferring it. He was an anomaly, in a sense, content to be the background character in others' stories while living a happy life on his own. Clarke doesn't know many people like that, but she thinks she needs to find more of them.

 

“I'm glad you're the one they sent.” He says, an eager grin on his face, leaning forward casually onto his elbows on the desk. “You seem like you can handle Dr. Woods.”

 

Clarke laughs, spinning her office chair back and forth with her foot. “What do you mean?”

 

He rolls his eyes, “you say that like you haven't noticed everyone here's afraid of her.”

 

Her laugh softens into a smile because, as foreign as it feels now to her to be afraid of Lexa, she remembers the thrill of it. Of how intimidating she can be, how opinionated, how commanding. But that feeling of being intimidated by her feels like a distant memory now, something that can be seen in the mind's eye but not touched or tasted or smelled, like the fuzzy haze of a night out on the town.

 

She remembers seeing her for the first time, at a house show that Raven had mistakenly believed was a house party, framed by Sienne's soft, smooth singing voice and the steely pluck of her guitar strings, the rat-a-tat of Oasis on the snare drum. Lexa was wearing combat boots and black skinny jeans, a black tank top hanging loose off her shoulders covered by a denim jacket layered over a black hoodie. She'd looked like one of the male hearthrobs in the alternative movies Clarke had grown up watching in the 90s, a cigarette in one hand and the glittering gold and white of what she'd later come to find was Lexa's favorite shitty beer in the other.

 

But what had really stood out to her that day was just how gorgeous she was, how severe. Everything about her screamed _stay away_ , yet there was a gentleness to her then, also: to the shimmery gloss in her eyes and the loose set of her mouth and the dangle of her free hand by her side.

 

“She's really not so scary.” She shakes her head at Monty's raised eyebrow. “No, I mean she can be, for sure. But she really just knows how to work people, how to get what she wants. She's smart and she's gorgeous and she knows how to manipulate that to her advantage and so she can be ruthless. But mostly she's trying to do what's right. She has a strong moral compass.” A wave of sadness hits her, chewy and syrupy and nauseating, Lexa's words ringing in her ears.

 

_This is for the best, Clarke._

 

She stops herself before she responds out loud, cries out the words  _please don't do this_ like she used to wake up doing during those nights she couldn't sleep without Lexa's body beside her, with this huge, gaping crack in her heart Lexa used to hold together so tenderly.

 

“How long were you together?” Monty says, still soft but now careful; like she's a frozen enemy in a video game and he's afraid his voice might shatter her.

 

“What?” She feels a shiver run through her, afraid that she'd given it away somehow, that it's written across her forehead for everyone to see, that she's inextricably linked to Lexa for life by some bond so powerful it's obvious to the world. “What makes you think we were together?”

 

He leans back, worries at his bottom lip for a second. She can practically see his thought processes, written in some foreign language she can't read, before his eyes lock on hers and he shrugs and he says, “everyone knows?” Like it's a question and not a statement. Like he hadn't just shattered every hope she'd had of keeping her past with Lexa out of her present.

 

“How.” And she responds in kind, like the word is an answer, flat-toned and stone-faced.

 

He swallows, looks the way she thinks he probably does when he's talking to Lexa about something work-related. “Nobody knew it was a secret, I guess.”

 

Clarke realizes she has two options. One is to just go with it and ease Monty's discomfort, the other to fight him until he discloses who told him and she can go kick the shit out of whoever it was. Her money's on Octavia at the moment whose slow, painful death she's already plotting in her head.

 

But then again, Clarke had never been the scary one, had always had something in her that caved in the face of others' pain. “Too long.” She finally says, tapping her nail on the desk. Then, encouraged by Monty's tender smile, “five years, give or take a few months.”

 

He just nods. It's simple, and effective, and she loves him all the more for it. “That's a long time.”

 

She swallows, tries to break apart the lump forming in her throat, the rush of images, of memories. The tug at the places she's tried so hard to keep under lock and key. She can feel the pull of Lexa, imagines she knows where she is just by the feel of it, urging her toward her office, toward her arms. It's an odd feeling, one she's never quite had with anyone else but her father.

 

“Yeah. It is.”

 

There's a few beats of silence where they just sit, Clarke drowning in her memories and Monty watching her, playing with his hands in his lap. He clears his throat and sits up straighter.

 

“I should probably get back to work.” He places his hand on the edge of the desk, and it's as comforting as if he'd placed it right on top of her fidgeting one. “But I wanted to invite you to the LGBTQ Staff and Student mixer this weekend.”

 

She nods dumbly, only half-listening to him, but manages to choke out, “oh. What's that?”

 

His lips twitch into a hint of a smile. “All the queer faculty, staff, and graduate students get together, eat vegetable plates and chat. It's weird, honestly.” He laughs at his own admission. “But the staff and faculty usually hit up a gay bar after, get a little drunk and dance. It's good for meeting everyone, blowing off some steam without the students there to make it messy.”

  
She nods again. “Okay. Maybe.”

 

He's standing up then and backing toward the door. “You mean definitely, right? I'll email you with more info.”

 

His enthusiasm is infectious and she can't help but smile back at him. “Okay. Email me and I'll be there.”

 

The door shuts and Clarke closes her eyes, leans her head down on her arm on the desk. It's all still there, somehow, all the memories, all the feelings, stirred to the surface, the silt swirling in her mind and making it impossible to see anything else. She's tired of fighting it—so tired—so she slips into the oblivion of her thoughts.

 

* * *

 

_Clarke leaned back in her chair, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose in order to get her frustration across. Because, honestly, she couldn't think of any body language that could be more obvious than what she was putting out now—body turned slightly away, arms nestled across her chest, lips pursed and eyes rolling with abandon. Not that the girl she was on a date with seemed to notice. No, she was still arguing about something Clarke only really cared about at this point because Lexa had challenged her on it in the first place._

 

“ _...you neo-liberal types are ridiculous. You want the benefits of global capitalism without all the downsides. War is necessary for you to have all your pretty shiny toys.” Lexa leaned forward, eyes narrowed, pointing a finger at her. “Either make your peace with what you have to do to live in luxury or start sacrificing.”_

 

_Clarke hadn't thought being anti-war would be something that would start an argument on this campus. What self-respecting college student—in Seattle of all fucking places—supports war? Especially one clearly started for oil. And it wasn't even like Lexa was some weird conservative Christian type or even a Republican at all, from what Clarke could gather. She was just… too informed. Wanted everyone to know it. Wanted to be different._

 

_And it had been a little intriguing, if she were being truthful, to meet someone who thought in such a unique way. If Lexa had stopped talking a minute ago, when it started to feel like she was mocking Clarke with a tone that left no room for argument and big words that made the whole thing feel a lot more like a paternal lecture and a lot less like light first date conversation, maybe it would have been sexy. But now she was shoving her finger in Clarke's face? Nope. Not happening._

 

_Clarke reached forward and grabbed her hand, forcing it down to the table, and Lexa let out a little gasp—a sharp, short inhale punctuated by a look of utter shock on her pretty features. Clarke knew why, or at least she thought she did. It would be easy to call it sparks, but that's always seemed to her to be an odd metaphor for the sensation. Not sparks or fire, more like the feeling of jumping into a frozen lake, the shock, the moment when your body registers the feeling of being totally and completely surrounded by an obstacle it can't possibly overcome. And then comes the warmth. The tingling. The endorphins._

 

_Their eyes caught, and Clarke wasn't breathing anymore. “Wanna get out of here?” She was breathless, almost begging. There was a part of her brain that was still trying to talk some sense into her: 'it's one touch! Remember how annoying she is? Don't do this!' But it was a distant thing, like a fading echo without a scream to start it. And besides, she wasn't really thinking much anymore at all, caught in a feedback loop of feeling._

 

_Lexa didn't say anything, just nodded. Just stood so abruptly the chair wobbled on two unsteady legs before clattering back down. The second they were out of the coffee shop and around the corner and found a spot with a semblance of privacy, Lexa was on her. She pressed the full length of her body against Clarke's, sending that feeling through her again—that jolt followed by a wave of sweat and heat._

 

“ _I'm going to kiss you now.” Even her voice was seductive, syrupy and thick and full, and her hands were on Clarke's cheeks, small and oddly delicate and so so gentle._

 

_Clarke nodded and it was everything she'd hoped it'd be, everything she'd imagined when she'd seen those pretty lips in her mind at night, imagined them soft against her skin, soothing against the bite of Lexa, against the hard edges and spikes she so clearly kept up to ward away strangers_

 

_It turned out, though, that despite her aggression, despite her force, Lexa was kind of a bottom. Clarke realized it at the worst possible moment, with Lexa on her elbows and knees in front of her, her head pressed into the pillow to suppress the small, quiet little noises she'd make, the near-constant uttering of “fuck” over and over and over. Her hands curling into the sheets, hanging onto control with everything she had. Clarke almost laughed before catching herself, letting it out in a few shaky, sporadic exhales against Lexa's back._

 

_But that wasn't to say that_ _she_ _wasn't a_ _lso a_ _great top._

 

“ _Leaving already?” Lexa said, her eyelids fluttering open, struggling to keep from falling shut again as she let the rush of her orgasm calm and settle. “I'm not done with you yet.”_

 

_The voice in Clarke's head had finally regained control, and now the memory of just why she should definitely not be here right now, doing this, came flowing back in full force. “Yeah, I have an early class tomorrow morning.” She was sitting on the edge of the bed, the hair tie she'd lost earlier reclaimed from the sheets_ _so she could redo the_ _bun it was in before Lexa's searching hands had gotten tangled in it and set it free._

 

_Lexa sidled up behind her, straddling her hips and trapping Clarke's ankles with her own. She placed an aimless kiss to Clarke's neck, then her shoulder, her hand tracing a line up her ribs and to her breast. She hummed. “I respect your responsibility, Clarke,” her fingertip grazed the tip of Clarke's nipple, and all of the air she'd thought she was breathing was gone in an instant, “but I do wish you would change your mind.” This time, she ran the pad of her thumb across her, with a bit more force than before, just enough to make sure Clarke felt the weight of her hand on her._

 

_And as much as Clarke knew she should leave, she couldn't help the way her hips bucked or the whine that rose in the back of her throat. Instead of pushing Lexa away she reached back and grabbed her by the hip, pulling the wet heat of her tighter against her body. Lexa didn't let up, but she didn't move to touch her anywhere else, either._

 

“ _You're sensitive here.” She muttered the words against Clarke's shoulder, and all Clarke could do was nod her agreement. Fuck yes, she was sensitive there and Lexa was exploiting that fact coupled with her already fever pitch levels of arousal leftover from fucking Lexa to spike her toward something she didn't fully understand._

 

_Because, see, she'd only ever had the kind of sex borne of necessity before that night, the kind that was desperate and quick. A wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am kind of deal. And she'd had that with Lexa for a moment, and it had been hot and comfortable and easy, but this—this hurtle toward orgasm with barely a touch (and what a tender touch it was) was something foreign and downright frightening._

 

_Clarke's whole body was responding to the gentle strokes of Lexa's fingers, her hips bucking regularly now, her whimpers and moans more pronounced. She was hardly trying to hide the fact she was staying until she came anymore, holding onto her stubbornness in only the most ornamental of ways._

 

“ _Lexa.” She whined out the word, bucking her hips against the air for emphasis. “Just fuck me already.”_

 

_Lexa's lips moved from her shoulder to the shell of her ear, and her words came in a rush of hot breath. “I am fucking you.”_

 

_But she wasn't, was the thing. Not in the traditional sense, at least. Both hands were clearly on Clarke's breasts with no intention of moving. Stroking, scraping, tugging. And it was driving Clarke insane, bit by bit, chipping away at her resolve, at any semblance of control she had over this situation. Building into an orgasm like one she'd never quite felt before._

 

_Lexa tugged on her nipple harshly and Clarke ground her hips back instead of forward this time, earning a surprised little gasp from Lexa. “Please.” She ground out the word, though she wasn't entirely sure what she was begging for—whether it was some sort of consummation, the kind one would expect, or whether it was just for Lexa to not stop, never stop, god don't stop. Either way, she couldn't fathom anything but what was happening right then, in that moment._

 

_It was clear Lexa was enjoying herself as well, which was only making the tremble in Clarke's bones more pronounced. With each shaking breath and buck against her back and involuntary twitch of her fingers, Lexa was sending Clarke hurtling toward orgasm at dangerous speeds._

 

“ _Oh, Jesus. I—” She didn't finish what she was saying, but she didn't really need to._

 

“ _I know.” Lexa whispered, heating her ear again with a burst of breath, grinding harder into her back. “It's okay, I'm right here with you.”_

 

_And there was something about that—about the feeling of safety, of belonging, that came with being surrounded by Lexa—that relaxed her back into her body. As much as she wanted pressure and friction on her clit, she couldn't deny the fact that she didn't think she really needed it._

 

_She reached for Lexa's jaw and turned her face directly into a desperate kiss, the sort of kiss that seemed like it could both summon bliss and stave it off, the kind that had Lexa pushing harder against Clarke until she couldn't breathe and had to turn her head away. But even that wasn't enough, and Clarke found herself biting at Lexa's jaw, maybe leaving a bruise there but not caring. She felt Lexa start to shake behind her, her hips picking up even more until she was treating Clarke's breasts roughly and shuddering against her back._

 

_It was that—Lexa coming from rutting against her—that probably did it for her, in retrospect. She came not a minute later, in an orgasm that felt unlike any she'd had ever before, one that made her shake and shiver and long for more, one that made her feel like a bomb with a faulty trigger that had exploded of its own accord—liquid and throbbing in her clit, despite it never being touched. “Shit.” She let the word out on a shaky breath, loud and uncaring of who else Lexa may share the apartment with._

 

_She found herself, fifteen minutes later, standing in the doorway to Lexa's room, getting ready to leave, when she heard Lexa call out from the bed._

_  
“That was fun. We should do it again sometime.” Lexa was lounging, not caring at all about the way her position half-propped up on her elbows was making the sheet (the only blanket left on the bed) slide down and bare her torso, the entirety of one long, strong leg._

 

_Truthfully? She wanted Lexa, she knew that. The girl was utterly gorgeous, and there was something about that calm overconfidence that brought out the competitive part of Clarke, a part she did her best to keep hidden but that still managed to slip free more often than she'd like. On the other hand, every time Lexa opened her mouth to talk, Clarke wanted to drive a spoon into her ears. So, there was that to consider._

_  
Clarke chewed on her bottom lip for a second, the voice in the back of her head full-force now without arousal blurring its edges. And yet still she released her lip, turned her head to face her in profile, and said. “Maybe.” Before walking out the door._

 

* * *

 

The thing about it was, Lexa's day had started off perfectly. She'd woken up with plenty of time to shower and eat breakfast, to savor her cup of coffee and a little bit of the book she'd been reading, to watch the sun rise over the houses across the street and generally just sort of ease into her day. And then, she'd gotten to work and everyone had been smiling at her. She hadn't been greeted by this deadline or that pressing need. It had been slow, calm.

 

And then she'd gone to discuss a trip out to the woods with Clarke—a conversation that, by all accounts, should have been quick and easy and all-around simple—that had ended in Jasper and getting snapped at by Clarke and she really should've known that whole endeavor wasn't going to go well. But then again, she always holds out hope that her interactions with Clarke will be positive.

 

She knows—she  _knows—_ that Clarke doesn't have the advantage Lexa does, of being the dumper and not the dumpee, but it doesn't truly make it easier for her. Because if she's being honest with herself (and Lexa excels at that particular virtue) she misses Clarke. Wants Clarke. And dragging Jasper out of that room by his ear had been as much an act of jealousy as it was one of propriety or of preventing a sexual harassment complaint. Jasper was hitting on Clarke. And there was a part of her that had bared its fangs and growled out,  _mine._

 

And now she has a headache like a goddamn jackhammer and the barrage of emails that aren't the one she's been waiting for are certainly not helping matters any. The text on the screen starts to blur and she squeezes her eyes shut as tightly as she can for a few seconds before opening them and blinking away the tears trying to moisten her over-worked eyes. 

 

The door slams open.

 

Who else would it be?

 

It's Clarke.

 

“Do you remember the first time you saw me?” She asks, still standing in the doorway, not daring to come in, seeming wild and feral and cornered.

 

Lexa swallows, lets the question sink in for a second before she nods. Nods, because words fail her, because Clarke is so beautiful, because this can't possibly be going in a direction that will end well for her. But Clarke doesn't say anything else, just stands there, caught between rage and melancholy, waiting.

 

So she straightens, tries to quell the fear twisting in her abdomen, and says, “at the library.”

 

That seems to get Clarke's attention and her head tilts a bit in a comically overstated motion despite the annoyance so clear on her features. “No, at the party. When I asked you out.”

 

Lexa angles her head down to try to hide her smile, because she knows this isn't something she's ever shared with Clarke before. “Was the first time we talked. The first time I saw you was at the library.” Clarke hesitates with her hand on the door, watches Lexa with a lip caught between teeth.  After a moment, she shuts it behind her and goes to stand at the desk. She waits, so Lexa continues. “I came out from the office to put a book back into circulation, and there you were.” She should really stop there. She's not stupid, she still knows this isn't going to end well for her. But she can't seem to control herself when she says, “I thought you were the most gorgeous person I'd ever seen, but you left before I could talk to you.”

 

Clarke leans forward, placing her hands against the desk, just watching her. Watching, in that indecipherable way she has of doing so, a way that Clarke has always attributed to Lexa but that had never really been hers. Lexa does her best to hold Clarke's gaze, to keep herself from shrinking away from the scrutiny, to be strong for once in her pathetic damn life, but it's not any use at all. Never when it comes to Clarke.

 

Finally, Clarke takes mercy on her. “You were out of line. I could've handled Jasper.”

 

Lexa almost argues, before she thinks better of it, and responds simply, “noted.” She feels out of control of this situation, unsure of where it's headed and  what turn it might take next and Lexa hates it. Hates that Clarke is doing this to her, slamming into her office and asking her questions and not giving her a single fucking answer. “Are we finished talking about the incident with Mr. Jasper now? We have business to discuss.”  She leans back in her chair, tries to look relaxed and non-chalant. “Did you get my email?”

  
“Email?”

 

Lexa nods, sees her opportunity to regain the upper hand and takes it mercilessly. “Yes. If you'll recall, I was coming to speak to you about something when I found Mr. Jordan in your office. I thought it better to just email you about it after your outburst.”

 

Clarke's jaw clenches and her nostrils flare, but she doesn't say anything.

 

“It's not supposed to rain this weekend. This is ostensibly the last good weather of the season, and I'd like to take advantage of it to get some baseline readings without worrying about flooding.” She reaches into her desk drawer and flips through some papers, finally coming to the stack she wants and pushing it across the desk for Clarke to sign. “But we need your approval before we move forward.”

 

“Oh.” Clarke says, lifting her hand to take the papers and thumbing through them. “Okay. Yeah.” She turns to walk away and pauses again with her hand on the knob, turning slowly to face Lexa. “We can't keep doing this.” She says, staring at Lexa again with a gaze that doesn't relent in the slightest. “The fighting.” Lexa nods her agreement and Clarke continues, “everyone knows. About us.”

 

Record scratch. Rewind. Insert other terminology about outdated media technology here. “What about us?” Lexa does her best to proceed with caution, to tread lightly like she does in the forest. There's a fifty-fifty chance that this conversation is about to take a nosedive for the worse, and she needs to be prepared for that.

 

Clarke cocks an eyebrow at her and okay, maybe she wasn't keeping it as cool as she'd hoped but her head really did hurt and she really was exhausted. “That we dated.”

 

Lexa lets her breath rush out in a covert sigh. “Oh.”

 

“You don't seem concerned.”

 

Something about this particular argument feels familiar, mined from the archives of her relationship with Clarke. The one where Clarke is upset and thinks Lexa should be, too, but is too stubborn to just say so and instead drags it out into a conversation with the intention of convincing her to care. “I'm not.”

 

Something falls across Clarke's face, then, some flash of realization. “Did you tell them?”

 

Lexa wants to roll her eyes, but manages to contain herself. Instead, she places the pen she'd been fidgeting with onto her desk, making a louder clatter than she'd intended. “Of course not.”

 

Clarke's jaw twitches, and Lexa can only imagine she's fighting the urge to make this into a full-blown argument—not one minute after saying they need to stop fighting.  “And you don't think that's a problem? That someone is going around gossiping about us?”

 

Lexa shrugs. “The larger you are, the more people see you. And the more people see you, the more they inevitably want to talk about you.”

 

Clarke looks away now, her cheeks sinking in whe n she breathes in harshly through her nose. She lets it out slowly.  “I'm coming to the LGBTQ staff and student mixer.”  She looks back to Lexa, like there will be some answer in her face, some tell that will give her… what? Lexa doesn't know, that's what scares her. What is Clarke gunning for?

 

“Okay.”

 

Whatever it is Clarke's looking for, she seems to find it. Because she does what she's always been best at—she walks away, leaving Lexa cold and lonely and aching pathetically for her company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, what do y'all think of the whole flashback thing? do you like them, or would you rather hear about what happened from the characters' current perspectives? also, i have a tumblr or something, come say hi. pmonkey816.tumblr.com


	9. so many feelings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know i said this chapter was going to be the mixer, but it ended up being really long and taking too long so i split it up into two chapters and added an extra flashback just to round it out a bit. i have the mixer half-written so expect that in the near future. i'm so sorry for all the feelings, clearly this is where my head has been at recently wrt the 100
> 
> as always, lemme know what you think and feel free to come talk to me on the tumblrbook. pmonkey816.tumblr.com

Lexa's in the parking lot of a Shell station smoking a cigarette. It's not the proudest moment of her life, honestly, hiding out far enough away from the University that she thinks she won't be seen indulging in a habit she'd kicked long ago. But, coping mechanisms are coping mechanisms, and this was doing it for her right this particular second.

 

It's a decent day—a bit cold without the sun but not raining, so hooray for small mercies—and there are kids swathed in hoodies and flannels practicing ollies and kickflips not twenty feet away. Lexa's watching them with something nostalgic swirling in her chest, which she thinks is utterly ridiculous because she's never had a spare second for skater boys. Though, Anya had forced her to spend time with them often enough, doing just what she's doing now.

 

Leaning against a dumpster, smoking cigarettes bummed from college students and overworked tech workers, with Anya pointing and saying, _what about that one?_ like Lexa will magically become less gay and find one of them attractive. But Lexa had been so starved for this friendship, for this casual banter and affection, that she'd played along. _He's all right._ She'd mutter back, _but that one's cuter._ Anya always knew what she was doing, of course. Lexa never downplayed her sexuality and Anya never asked her to. _That's because that one looks like a girl. Jesus, Lex. Could you_ be _any more gay?_

 

Lexa would just shrug, take another drag of her cigarette and a gulp of her Natty Ice and be done with it. Most of the time, that was enough for Anya. But sometimes, she'd drag Lexa along to talk to them, make her entertain one of the boy's friends while she flirted, smoked their shitty weed and blew him in the back alley. And all along, Lexa would have to feign interest in him—in his shaggy, unwashed hair and his boring, pasty face and the clothing that never actually fit him, that was supposed to look grungy and dirty but was clearly from the mall. The mall he'd probably ridden to in the backseat of his mom's minivan to get to. They never talked about their parents, which was good, because that meant she never had to talk about hers. Instead, she'd talk to him about Tony Hawk or mountain bikes or Nirvana and stare at the other skaters' girlfriends, wishing she were anywhere but there.

 

That is, until she met Costia. Costia, who would bristle and place a possessive arm around her waist when those boys tried to talk to her, who'd cock a hip straight into Lexa's and raise an eyebrow at the boy; begging him to try. Costia, with her loving background, her parents who would always smile when they saw her, though their lips would press a bit too tight in disapproval. Not that Costia ever cared. She was dating a sixteen year old homeless girl and she was ready to fight the world for her right to do so. She sighs. It's been a while since she's spoken to Costia, she should call her, try to catch up. Maybe they could grab coffee sometime. Of course, all of this was an elaborate ploy to avoid thinking about Clarke, to avoid thinking about the conversation she'd just had with Anya.

 

“ _She's going to the mixer?” Anya had asked, amusement sparkling in her eyes. “Oh, that's rich.”_

 

It had started in typical Anya fashion and ended with,  _“Don't let her hurt you again, Lex.”_

 

Like she had any right to tell  _Lexa_ what to do with her life. The woman was a walking disaster nine times out of ten, and Lexa had to follow her around with a broom and dustpan just to keep the crash and burn of Anya's life from spitting fire and debris into her own.

 

She takes another drag of her cigarette, pulling until it burns her lips and her fingertips, then quashes it against the dumpster and tosses it inside. She starts back toward the University, her hands tucking into the pockets of her slacks. Anya had insisted on dressing her today, and it felt... weird. Like some sort of movie montage of clothes shopping and picking out outfits that didn't suit the two of them at all that resulted in Lexa wearing what felt like a costume. She'd gotten several compliments on it already—clearly she looked good—but she didn't feel like herself and she didn't want to perform for Clarke. Not when it was clear Clarke didn't feel the same.

 

It was early still, though it was hard to tell with clouds casting everything in dark grey shadow, an ominous filter to the world around her. She has another few hours until the mixer. She can make it. Clarke is about to enter her world—her  _social_ world, not just her work world, and she will handle it. She has no other choice.

 

* * *

_On the night of Clarke and Lexa's three year anniversary, Lexa comes home to an empty house. She and Clarke aren't living together—not technically, it's always been important to Lexa that she have her own space and Clarke have hers—but most nights, there's a gently snoring blonde in her bed. Lexa's grateful for it. After all, there's nothing better after a long, stressful day than lying down and pulling Clarke's arm around her waist, of feeling Clarke nuzzle into her neck and just_ breathe _. Sometimes they chat a bit, Clarke murmuring sleepy nothings against her that she never remembers in the morning, but mostly they just hold each other and Lexa slips easily into sleep._

 

_Tonight, however, Clarke has an event to attend and Lexa can't fault her for that. They've never been the couple to put their relationships before their work, and most of the time they both prefer it that way. Plus, Clarke has always been the one to care about trivialities like birthdays and anniversaries and they'd agreed to just celebrate it tomorrow. Needless to say, Lexa isn't all that upset about it. In fact, it gives her an opportunity to get a little more work and some cleaning done tonight before she settles in for bed._

 

_She powers on her laptop (the one she'd left at home at Clarke's urging because Clarke's was in for repairs) and the first thing she sees is an icon in the middle of her immaculately organized desktop titled WATCH ME. She clicks on it and up pops a still image of Clarke, smiling tightly and uncomfortably, sitting next to Octavia, whose guitar is settled in her lap. She hits play._

 

“ _Hey, babe.” Clarke starts, still forcing that wide smile, licking at her lips and rubbing at her neck. “I wanted to say I love you and happy anniversary. I don't have a lot of money to get you a gift this year, so I hope this'll do.” She leans back away from the camera and looks over to a grinning Octavia before turning back to the camera and quickly adding, “O made me do this.”_

 

_Lexa chuckles. Octavia is an accomplished amateur musician who, along with Raven, is always covering songs and forcing everyone to drunkenly sing along with them. Clarke, on the other hand, has always hated her own voice, thought it wasn't good enough, been embarrassed by the raspy tone and what she deemed her inability to carry a tune, though Lexa had always insisted her voice was beautiful; that not having perfect pitch wasn't necessary; that one shouldn't have to be good at something in order to do it. Which Clarke agreed with in theory, but when it came to herself? Well, suffice it to say Clarke is a perfectionist._

 

_Octavia starts strumming, but it isn't until Clarke starts singing that Lexa recognizes the song. “Stacks on deck. Patron on ice. We can pop bottles all night and baby you can have whatever you like.” Clarke's nervous smile blooms into a wide, genuine one as she continues on, “I said you can have whatever you like. Yeah. Late night sex, so wet and so tight,” Clarke's eyes flutter shut, like she's imagining it, the feeling of Lexa around her fingers and Lexa feels her breath catch in her throat at how gorgeous her girlfriend is, how perfect. How this could be so so so stupid if it were anyone else singing it for her, but instead it's Clarke and it's incredible._

 

“ _I'll gas up the jet for you tonight and baby you can go wherever you like. I said you can go wherever you like. Yeah. Anytime you want to pick up the telephone you know it ain't nothing to drop a couple stacks on you. If you want it you can get it my dear. Five million dollar homes drop business I swear. Yeah, I want your body. I need your body. As long as you got me you won't need nobody.” Her eyes lock onto the screen, like she knows just how enraptured Lexa will be, like she's imagining her watching her, like she's singing to an audience in the room, and Lexa has never been happier about a present while simultaneously being left empty and aching so much because of it. Her hand falls to her thigh and squeezes, just to release this feeling building behind her ribs—beautiful and indescribable and full to bursting. She forces her eyes to stay open despite how much they want to flutter shut and just enjoy how overwhelmed and breathless her girlfriend can make her. “You want it, I got it. Go get it, I'll buy it. Tell them other broke fools be quiet.”_

 

_She launches back into the chorus, and Lexa leans back, tries not to be so affected by it, tries to circulate her breathing—in through the nose, out through the mouth—because it feels like a lot, this gift that should mean nothing, that should just be the nonsense lyrics of a pop song rendered acoustic but instead is the embodiment of sex, of Clarke, of their relationship, of the love they feel for one another._  
  
Octavia joins in for harmony in the bridge, and Clarke looks over to her, clearly enjoying their collaboration despite being shy about her own singing. It's just the reprieve Lexa needs and she can feel herself calming without Clarke's eyes on her. “Shawty you the hottest. Love the way you drop it. Brain so good could've sworn you went to college.” They both pause what they're doing and point at the screen for the last line and she can't help but laugh and shake her head a little. Her girlfriend and her friends are dorks despite how cool they always seem to strangers, and as much as she pretends to roll her eyes, she can't get enough. Can never get enough of Clarke. “100k deposit. Vacations in the tropics And everybody know it ain't tricking if you got it. You ain't never ever gotta go in your wallet. Long as I got rubber band banks in my pocket. 5 6 rides with rims and a body kit. You ain't gotta downgrade you can get what I get. My chick can have what she want.” She can tell Clarke's getting into it now, letting her inhibitions go as she starts to wriggle to the music, to bob and sway like she's the hype man in a music video. It's terrible, terrible dancing but so endearing Lexa can't fault her for it. “And go in any store for any bag she wants. I know you ain't never had a man like that. To buy you anything your heart desire like that.” Lexa's heart flutters a bit, and it's stupid because this is a song about sugar daddies, about nothing at all, about transactional sex and yet. And yet.

 

_Lexa has never had a person like that in her life, who tries to fulfill her no matter what. She'd been young when she was with Costia and their love was a selfish thing, a greedy fulfillment of desires that had been deemed deviant and taboo and though she never questioned whether she loved her, it certainly wasn't the same as it was with Clarke. Clarke thought of Lexa at the same time that she thought of herself. They were a partnership, easily independent but so synced and communicative in their own way._  
  
The rest of it is all repetition and dancing, two friends goofing off in the empty space of Lexa's apartment. Clarke's attention is still drawn away from the screen by the addition of Octavia's voice, until. Until. “Talking big boy rides & big boy ice. Let me put this big boy in your life. That thing get so wet & get so right, let me put this big boy in your life. that's right.” She looks back to the camera. She winks. And Lexa thinks winking is stupid and pretty much never sexy, but she melts. She's been in love before, And once again she thinks of Costia, of how different their love had been. Indescribably so. She's never been so vulnerable with anyone like she is with Clarke. Not with Costia. Not with Sienne. Not even with Anya. Because Clarke stole her heart. It's a cliché, but it's the best she can manage. She'd built walls a mile thick and a hundred feet tall; all barbed wire and steel and  stay the fuck away, _but then here came Clarke with her vibrant eyes and the little mole above her lip and the soft curves of her hips and her breasts and her waist, and that classic cheerleader sort of beauty that had all of those walls shaking in their foundation._

 

_And then, they'd kissed and it had all ignited and burned to ash. She'd fallen in love that first night, and she'd spent the next three years trying to prove herself worthy of Clarke's affection, trying to prove to herself that letting Clarke in was the right decision. She never questioned it when Clarke was near—she couldn't—but her friends' teasing and Clarke's absence never failed to bring the question to the forefront again. But this, this was next-level sweet and sexy and Lexa can't deny it anymore._

 

_She is utterly and madly in love with Clarke Griffin. She doesn't believe in soul mates, but that isn't important because she doesn't want to ever be without this woman in her life. So, maybe that's good enough. Maybe that's what people mean when they say things like 'true love' and 'soul mate' and 'the one.' Maybe she's finally found a home._

 

* * *

 

“You look stressed.” Lincoln says it the second Lexa walks through the door of the grad student lounge, prompting everyone in the room to stop what they're doing and look up at her. Which, great. Awesome. She loves it when everyone pays attention to her emotions. Not undermining to her as an authority figure at all.

 

Octavia is standing, hovering over her desk with mouse in hand and her eyes flicker up for the barest of seconds. But Lexa's appearance doesn't seem to warrant any interest for her, so she flicks them back down to the paper, goes about her business. Lexa had always known she liked that one. All business in lab, no time or use for the trivialities the rest of them seem to thrive on.

 

“Still look great, though. Damn, Dr. Woods.” Cali says, leaning back in her chair and tapping her pen against her lips, her eyes flickering over Lexa's frame. And it's a joke and everyone laughs, but Lexa raises an eyebrow and says,

 

“Boundaries, Ms. Bacic.” And moves past them all to rifle through the filing cabinet in the corner.

 

There are soft footsteps behind her, and she has to struggle to hold in a pained sigh. Why does everyone always want to talk to her?

 

“Hey.” It's Lincoln, of course, tender soul that he is. One of his thick arms comes to rest against the filing cabinet, placing him almost directly in front of her. He's trying to announce himself without pushing, to hold space for her to talk. She's seen him do it to other people before—somehow, his gentle presence seems capable of coaxing feelings out of almost anyone.

 

“Hello, Lincoln.” She's not even really looking for the file she wants anymore so instead she focuses on the tattoos on Lincoln's arms, the Polynesian tribal tattoos that twist up his forearm and around the mandala on his bicep—the only tattoo of his she's ever seen that has color splashed onto it, still bright but faded from sun exposure. “Is there something I can help you with?” She makes the mistake of looking up to Lincoln's face, and the way he's looking at her sends shivers down her spine.

 

His face is open, waiting, but scrutinizing. As if he can tease out her thoughts if he focuses hard enough. No, as if her thoughts will simply rise to the surface if he waits long enough. Her stomach twists, and panic rises in her chest. She can feel her hands start to tremble—a little quake that starts in the wrists and radiates out to her fingertips—so she grabs onto a file—she's not even sure which one it is, she doesn't even care, she just wants out of there fast. She shuts the filing cabinet—too fast, too hard, it slams. She needs to go, needs to run, can't let them see her like this.

 

Lincoln's hand is heavy when it lands on her wrist, so large compared to her delicate wrists that the nail of his forefinger touches the knuckle of his thumb. But he's not holding her, his grip is loose and easy, and she could pull away without effort if she wanted to. It's simply there, holding her still, keeping her from floating too far into her head. “Meditation helps if you're not sleeping.” He says. “I could suggest some good videos if you wanted to...”

 

She tugs her arm back and steps toward the door. “No. Thank you, Lincoln. I'm sleeping fine.” She walks calmly out of the room, to the end of the hall, through the door to the labs. She almost—almost makes it all the way into her office before it happens, but the hallway is empty anyway, so maybe it's all the same. Her key is in the lock, turning, when the tears she'd been attempting to blink away the past few minutes—hours—days—years—finally slunk in hot, halting trails down her cheeks, the tremble in her hands came back, echoing down into her knees. She manages to slip inside before it hits her fully, and she leans back against the wall, slips down until her knees hit her chest, and lets it all go.

 

* * *

 

“ _Clarke, are you still awake?”_ _Lexa stumbled blearily out into the hallway, only awake because of the chill of the night and the lack of a warm body next to her to soothe it._

 

_There was a distracted hum from the kitchen, and Lexa padded toward it, finding Clarke bent over a textbook, her laptop set up next to her and casting an unhealthy pale light over her. She grabbed her coffee mug in an unsteady hand and took another sip. “Go back to bed, babe.” She mumbled, barely sparing a glance from the book to Lexa._

 

_Lexa didn't go back to bed. Of course not. Instead, she took the few steps forward to come up behind Clarke, to wrap her arms around her shoulders and lean her chin on one. To nuzzle into her neck, and inhale the smell of stale coffee and salt and faded perfume. She pressed a kiss there—how could she resist kissing Clarke?—then nudged at the moist spot with her nose. “Come with me.” There weren't a whole lot of things that could distract from doing something she'd set her mind to, but sex was one of them._

 

_Clarke hummed again, her eyes fluttering shut at the feeling of Lexa against her neck, her lips twitching in response like they were waiting for Lexa's to find them. “Can't. This presentation is a huge part of my grade. I can't fuck it up.”_

 

_Lexa started working her thumbs into Clarke's upper arms, sliding upward toward her shoulders slowly as she did. Unfortunately, that meant she had to lift her head, but it was worth it when Lexa found the knot that always formed just at the base of her neck when Clarke hunched over for too long and started to work it, and Clarke groaned in that almost obscene way she had and rolled her head back to lean against Lexa's chest. “You won't. It's done, now you're just obsessing. And not sleeping will do far more harm to your grade than obsessing will do to help it.”_

 

_Clarke paused, reached up to grab Lexa's hands and still them, then turned in her chair to face her. “What if I fuck it up? What if the Prezi doesn't work? What if—?”_

 

_Lexa cut her off with a quick kiss—or, well, what was supposed to be a quick peck that Lexa couldn't help but press a little harder for, set her mouth a little looser, lick a little at Clarke's lip before pulling away—letting her forehead stay rested against Clarke's when she pulled back. “You won't fuck it up, and you know the Prezi's gonna work. You already went over all the troubleshooting with Raven.” She nudged Clarke's nose with her own. “Come to bed. Worrying will get you nowhere but tired.”_

 

“ _I need to graduate, Lexa. I need to get into grad school, I've worked_ so _hard, I just—”_

 

_Lexa could feel the shallow, rapid breaths against her stomach, the shaking of her shoulders. She knew the triggers for Clarke's panic—future, family, disappointing her mother, disappointing the spirit of her father, being unsuccessful, going nowhere, not doing anything of value. She pushed Clarke's chair back and knelt in front of it, taking Clarke's hands gently in her own, rubbing soft, wide circles against her palms with her thumbs._

 

“ _Breathe, darling.” She said, big eyes watching Clarke with a wary sort of anticipation. “It's going to be okay. All of your hard work will pay off, I promise.”_

 

“ _But you don't_ know _that, Lex!” She cried out, swallowing and swallowing and swallowing like it'll keep the tide of panic at bay. “How could you possibly know that?”_

 

“ _Because.” Lexa's hands gripped Clarke's forearms next, forcing her unfocused eyes back to her. “I've been there, okay? I came from nothing and now I'm in graduate school, with a wonderful girlfriend and incredibly good job prospects. So, breathe. Okay?”_

 

_Clarke took in a deeper breath—still shallow, still shaky, but better—and let it out slowly through her lips, mirroring Lexa's breathing. They repeated this for a few minutes, the two of them simply breathing together until the muscles around Clarke's mouth started to relax. Lexa stood, tugged on Clarke's wrists and this time, Clarke didn't offer any resistance, just let herself be led to the bedroom. She lay down and tugged Lexa's arms around her. It wasn't often that Clarke wanted to be held, but Lexa never minded either way. She was happy to be there with Clarke, that Clarke had calmed and was possibly on her way to sleep. In fact, she'd thought that Clarke was asleep when she finally spoke._

 

“ _I love you. You know that, right?” She said, so softly Lexa almost missed it._

 

“ _Of course. I love you, too.”_

 

_Clarke pulled Lexa's arms tighter around her, and Lexa tensed up her arm to squeeze her even tighter. There was another beat of silence, and Lexa thought Clarke's dropped the subject, but then, “I need you, and it scares me.”_

 

_Lexa pressed a soft kiss behind Clarke's exposed ear. “Don't be scared, I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere.”_

 

_There was a sniffle and a rattling breath, and Lexa realizes in an instant that Clarke has been crying this entire time, not sleeping. And it was sort of frightening, because she's only seen Clarke cry a handful of times, and she has certainly never seen her quite so vulnerable, quite so broken as she is right now._

 

“ _Promise?”_

 

“ _I promise.” Another kiss, this time to Clarke's temple. “Go to bed, darling.” A kiss to her cheek. “I've got you. I'll be here.”_

 

_It took a while but eventually the tears and the trembling subsided and her breathing evened out, and Clarke slipped away into sleep._

 

_She aced her presentation, naturally. Her professor called her oration style “effortless.”_


	10. summer girls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, technically this chapter isn't actually finished. but i wanted to put something out there so y'all know i'm working on it/i'm still alive. technically, this is about half the chapter i wanted it to be. guess you'll just have to wait for the dramatic finish. i hope you're still around, too, and still enjoying it. thanks for reading, friends!

The mixer is an all-around dull affair, as that sort of thing tends to be, and Clarke spends most of it being introduced to everyone by Monty and doing her best to be charming. It should be easy; after all, there has always been something sort of effortlessly charismatic about her, with people following her whether she wants them to or not. In high school, she wasn't necessarily a popular kid, but still somehow ended up with a group of loyal acolytes like she was some sort of blonde teenage girl Jim Jones.

But really, the mixer is no alcohol and all vegetable plates and hummus and those cheap cardboard tables covered in white-starched cloth and a low murmur of people in conversation, and Clarke finds herself a bit lost socially in a way she isn’t usually. She’s distracted, finding it difficult to focus on what everyone is saying, much less to remember everyone’s name. There’s something in her chest, dammed up in her veins, swelling and threatening to burst into her heart.

And it’s not because of Lexa. She is most certainly spending her energy focusing on the people she's meeting and not on the woman across the room, looking breezily stylish as she always does in her dark patterned short-sleeve button up and black jeans. She was wearing a hat earlier, too, Clarke saw it. It was the kind that isn't really supposed to look good on anyone after 1930 but damn if that woman can't rock pretty much any aesthetic under the sun.

Clarke's dressed in that predictable ho-hum sort of way she expects everyone else to be, the way she would have to if this was an event at her job in DC—well, almost. She'd dressed up just a little bit, in pin-stripe business slacks held up by suspenders over a plain white button-up. And see, there was a reason for it. She's not proud of it, necessarily, but there  _ is _ a reason.

Lexa loves her in clothes like this. Or, well, she used to, at least. Lexa loved her in skirts and dresses, too, particularly sundresses and those tiny, tight black ones that show off more leg than they cover and pair perfectly with some heavy eyeliner and carefully-askew hair. But when it comes to formal wear, Lexa always—always—used to melt for Clarke in a power suit.

Which is why Clarke can't stop trying to steal glances over at her ex, who's chatting disinterestedly with almost everyone except the select few she's comfortable with. Probably about things that really don't warrant much interest, anyway—Clarke knows how work functions are. Getting dragged around from inane small talk to inappropriately-timed shop talk. Except every now and then, something will make her smile or laugh and those green eyes will light right up and those lips will quirk and twitch no matter how much she tries to hide her amusement, her  _ humanity _ .

The night continues in that fashion, a bit dull and stifled--Lexa eyeing the exits the whole time--until it doesn’t. Clarke is talking to someone she has almost no interest in—a graduate student in the history of blah blah blah Clarke's not really listening—when she hears it. And she looks. And yes, Lexa is laughing again but the difference is that now there's a stranger's hand on her bicep. A  _ gorgeous _ stranger who's lean with muscled arms clearly visible beneath her tight-fitted sleeves and long black hair that falls down her back in thick dreads. And she's sitting awfully close to Lexa at that big, empty table and her  _ hand _ is on Lexa's  _ arm _ and she's fixing Lexa's (already impeccably starched) collar and Lexa doesn't let anyone touch her. Not like that. Not in  _ public. _

Not that Clarke's freaking out about it or anything. Not at all. That would be ridiculous. But that doesn't mean she can't walk over there and say something. She thinks briefly of finding someone to flirt with, to try to make Lexa feel the twinge of jealousy Clarke's feeling now, but a quick sweep of the room finds mostly graduate students (a bit taboo for Clarke's position, honestly, not to mention often too young) but also that the woman Lexa's flirting with is easily the most beautiful person present. But before she can move to go talk to them, Monty's speaking to her.

“You okay?” He says, his hand delicate on her elbow to grab her attention.

“Yeah.” Though she can't quite manage to tear her attention away from Lexa and this newcomer. “Why wouldn't I be?”

Monty laughs, not really smiling though there’s an amused twinkle in his deep brown eyes. “Because you look like you're trying to murder Des with your glare.”

She looks over at him, opens her mouth to respond, and finds no words. She snaps it shut again. Then, “I'm not.”

Monty's not laughing anymore, but there's still a mirthful quirk to his lips. “Okay.”

Clarke pauses, looks away from Lexa for a moment to look at her hands, feels an overwhelming wave of sadness engulf the anger she'd been feeling just seconds ago. “Are they together?” She asks, worrying one hand with the other. “It's just—” She stops abruptly, trying to pull herself together so she can look at Monty like a normal human, to interact like this doesn't bother her at all. She raises her head and meets his soft brown eyes as valiantly as she can. “She said she wasn't seeing anybody, that's all.”

He shrugs. “There's been rumors,” he responds, not looking away from her for a second. “But there are also rumors that the two of you are together again. People talk.”

He's not confirming anything, she has no reason for it to happen, but her heart cracks just a little, lets the black waters rush in, and she frowns.

He's quick to interrupt her thought process. “I don't think so, though. Des has a lot going on. She brought her girlfriend to the last mixer, which was, like, a month ago.”

Clarke nods. She doesn't say anything else. The rest of the mixer passes in a blur of conversations and faces and names she won't remember.

The group decides to forgo their usual post-mixer dance club and instead head out to a karaoke bar—one that's quiet and tucked-away, where they aren't likely to run into students or other faculty, where the mysterious newcomer can be examined and questioned.

Monty likes the post-mixer hangouts they always have. He'd jokingly referred to it as The Afterparty, and Clarke had quickly taken up the mantle, clearly tickled by the idea of it. And, really, he likes that. He likes that she's so... easy, in a lot of respects, so fun and open.

He can also see how she could be the exact opposite of that. Because at the same time that she is laughing and taking shots with her new colleagues and generally charming the metaphorical pants off of everyone, she's very pointedly  _ not _ doing any of those things with Lexa. It could be said that at the beginning of the night they'd been seated at different tables and not facing each other and that's why they weren't talking, just an unfortunate happenstance. Which, Monty would probably argue that that was a conscious choice, but okay. He can give them that one. And, to be fair, he was spending a lot of time watching Dr. Miller cuddle up to his husband at the next table over, so... he was distracted, to say the least.

But as the night begins to wear on—as Clarke keeps drinking—she starts going out of her way to let Lexa know she’s ignoring her. Little things, like getting up to go get drinks or go to the bathroom and purposefully walking around the other tables in a way that parades her right in front of Lexa. Like laughing even louder than before and even, when the seating at Lexa's table ends up getting rearranged and places Clarke in the periphery of Lexa’s vision, sitting a little too close to the woman next to her. Who doesn't really seem to mind much, honestly, but he’s also pretty sure Karen is drunk off her ass (Karen is almost always drunk off her ass when she isn’t at work, but hey—at least it makes her fun).

It catches him off guard when they finally do interact. A group of them has headed to the bar for another round of drinks. He's at that point in the evening where his drunkenness is starting to settle over him—where everything is a bit more vibrant and yet also a bit duller. Like the warmth of the colors has been turned up to eleven, but the focus has been turned down--a blurry image shot with an impeccable camera. He's watching the way Lexa (who's standing at the second well just a few feet away, tapping her cash on the bar impatiently while she waits for her drink) keeps ducking her eyes down to the laminated wood under her arms even though her chin is tilted toward Clarke. He knows that feeling. Wanting to look, but being afraid of what you'll see. Not wanting to look, but being afraid of what you'll miss. Which is more painful? He certainly never can decide. And, for once, he thinks he actually feels bad for Dr. Lexa Woods. Because, for once, he thinks he actually sees her, without the layers of armor she usually dons.

“I didn't know Brian was coming tonight.” The voice next to him startles him back to the real world with a jolt.

Monty glances up at Miller, his eyes staring straight ahead, the beginning stubble of his beard starting to grow back again (Monty likes the beard on him, but Brian has a thing for clean-shaven guys, apparently). Monty shrugs. Doesn't say anything. What is there to say, anyway?

_ Neither did I? _

_ I wish he hadn't? _

_ He's a douche? _

_ I wish you were mine? _

_ I still remember the taste of latex on my tongue and the feeling of your hands in my hair? _

_ I can't stop thinking about the ghost of your breath on my lips, the sour smell of alcohol it carried? _

_ I loved it anyway? _

_ What is there to say? _

“We... I...” Miller tries again, shoving his hands into his pockets now. He still hasn't brought himself to look at Monty, and who knows. Maybe that's for the best because Monty sort of feels like maybe he's going to cry and he's always hated that about himself—how much his heart insists on riding on his sleeve.

“It was a mistake.” Monty clips out. “Got it.”

Miller finally looks at him, has the gall to look  _ wounded _ . “No, Monty. That's not what I was gonna say.”

And somewhere in that short conversation is when it happens. When they lock eyes from down the bar—Clarke and Lexa—enacting some ages-old dating ritual only the two of them understand. There is a bang as both of their bottles simultaneously hit the counter and then they’re off, lifting their beers up into the air in exaggerated gulps. Lexa's slams back to the counter just a second before Clarke's and she throws her hands in the air triumphantly. Then she looks over at Clarke and smirks. She sucks her bottom lip between her teeth as she watches Clarke roll her eyes in mock exasperation.

Clarke is scowling, but there's something a little playful about it. And yes it is playful, but there's something a little dark about it, too. Like Clarke is a second away from tackling Lexa to the floor. What happens after that is anybody's guess, really. Lexa remembers that look all too well, remembers it with an ache in her belly it’s becoming harder and harder to ignore with every passing second.

“You know what happens when you lose the game, Clarke.” Lexa is smiling, trying to seem unaffected, and this is bad— _ so _ bad—because Clarke is looking at her the way she does when her competitive side manages to find its way out of its cage which had usually only ended in fucking or fighting before. She's pretty sure it's not going to end in sex tonight. God, she hopes not. She thinks. Maybe? The image of Clarke, legs spread wide for her, pulling her hips closer like she can pull Lexa inside of her that way, like she could  _ come _ from just grinding against Lexa’s groin, breath hard and fast against Lexa’s lips… Fuck. She's fucked.

“Yeah, yeah. What's it gonna be this time?” She rolls her eyes and leans a hip against the counter in a mocking ape of Lexa’s pose—all arrogant nonchalance, as always.

After a moment of thought, Lexa decides to go light. After all, Clarke is at a disadvantage here. And she still has her conversation at the mixer with Dr. Titus fresh in her mind.

_ “You're already starting to slip, Lexa. Don't let her drag you down from achievement.” _

She shifts so that one hand is hidden behind her back, and clenches her fist tight, putting all of her anger and frustration into the tension. She loosens her grip on herself with a slow exhale she disguises as a thoughtful sigh. “Sing one of those terrible 90s/early millennium boy band songs.” She knows Clarke hates karaoke. She always has—she can’t stand her own singing voice, especially amplified to a group of people giving her their rapt attention. But she’s drunk, which will ease the edge of that discomfort a bit. Maybe it will even help her make friends here.

Clarke's smirk turns a bit surprised and lopsided, but she shrugs. “You're losing your edge, Woods.”

Outside of her professional life, Lexa has never really understood the use of formalities. That is to say, how much other people seem to enjoy last names or titles like Mister, Doctor, Miss, etc. But that could have to do with the fact that her father insisted she call him “sir” growing up. “Or maybe I'm just trying to go easy on you,  _ Griffin _ .” The last name one was always particularly strange to her, though she's certainly willing to volley it right back to Clarke. It's somehow fitting for Clarke, anyway. It's enigmatic. Both more familiar than a first name and also less so.

_ “She's not dragging me down, Titus.” _

“Too bad I'm not planning on going easy on  _ you _ .” Clarke is walking backward already, toward the table with the books and paper on it, but she stays turned toward Lexa just long enough to make sure Lexa catches the twist of her full lips, the way the rest of her face curls in pretty waves around it, the way the mole above her lip gets caught up in the middle like a ship in a tsunami.

Clarke's smile is a force of nature.

_ Clarke _ is a force of nature.

“ _ You treat her as though she's special.” _

_ A beat. Lexa looks up from where she'd been watching Cali interact with another student without even realizing she’s looking at something that’s not Titus. The student is pretty. Too young for Lexa, but just right for Cali. She watches them, enamored with one another, oblivious to the rest of the world, basking in the glow of young affection that has the possibility of blooming into love. She looks up at Titus and sees the distrust on his face, the deep lines forged of anger and hard work and years spent alone, the rapidly tightening hand still on her arm from when he’d dragged her away from prying eyes.  _ People don't have to live their lives in the closet anymore!  _ She wants to yell at him.  _ Things are different now! _ But she doesn't have those words. He couldn't understand. He refuses to, he always has. He’s never even met Clarke. _

_ “Because she is.” _

“NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK HAD A BUNCH OF HITS, CHINESE FOOD MAKES ME SICK. AND I THINK IT'S FLY WHEN GIRLS STOP BY FOR THE SUMMER, FOR THE SUMMER.” Clarke throws a wink at the audience and it lands somewhere between the group standing in front of the stage dancing and throwing their hands carelessly skyward, singing along, sloshing alcohol over the sides of glasses, and the rest of them hanging back at the tables, sipping slowly and grinning widely at her display. Just like Clarke, she thinks, to make everyone think she's paying special attention to them when in reality she's paying attention to no one. “I LIKE GIRLS THAT WEAR ABERCROMBIE AND FITCH. I'D TAKE HER IF I HAD ONE WISH. BUT SHE'S BEEN GONE SINCE THAT SUMMER, SINCE THAT SUMMER.” Her voice is hoarse from use and from the sheer volume she’s managing, breathless from dancing and reaching for the fingertips of the crowd in front of her like she’s a pop star and not a government worker. Lexa follows her with her eyes, sipping her beer too fast. The coolness in her throat helps a bit to ground her, but not nearly enough. She can’t stop just looking at Clarke, at the sway of her hips and the movement of her lips, the glowing passion in her eyes, the swish of her hair as she thrashes her head along with the music during the instrumental breaks.

The stupid thing about how awed she is by Clarke’s performance is that Clarke is trying to irritate her. That much is obvious. She knows how much Lexa hates boy bands, and instead of picking one of the tolerable ones that everyone likes, taking the easy road to getting everyone to like her by choosing a familiar one people will know and can sing along to, one that Lexa could tune out enough to not really listen while simultaneously feeling smug about her victory, she's singing this. This-this  _ atrocity _ that makes literally no sense lyrically and is shallow and... She's fucking with her. That is what this is. And it's definitely  _ not  _ bothering her.

Apparently, it's not bothering anyone else, either. Because the rest of the University of Washington's faculty and staff seem pleased as fucking punch to dance in front of the little stage, hips swaying and bottles lifted in the air, screaming along to such deep, philosophical lyrics as “when you take a sip you buzz like a hornet. Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets.” Seriously, though. Karen from the English department should be having a fucking aneurysm—she's a feminist poet, for fuck’s sake—but instead she's dancing along, gazing up at Clarke like she's Aphrodite, or Sappho, or—Audre Lorde, or… shit, Lexa doesn't know anything about history or English, to be honest, just that she really doesn't like the way Karen is looking at Clarke. Because, even if Lexa can't have her anymore, Clarke is still... hers. Her ex. The love of  _ her  _ life. The secret place she goes to when she’s lonely, when she thinks about stupid, useless abstracts like family and home. And wordy, pretentious, “look-how-intellectual-and-whimsical-I-am” Karen the Drunk can’t have her. Not even for a night, not even for an hour, not even for a moment.

Fuck.

She needs to not be here right now. She needs to  _ go _ .


	11. what could have been

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyyyy
> 
> so i wrote this thing? and here's the disclaimer: i can't promise i'm gonna finish this. i'm gonna try! i'm always trying! and i got this flash of inspiration so i wrote. i really, really wanna get this all on paper as my mental health/life allows. but again, i can't promise. so, read at your own risk.
> 
> i debated posting this at all cause i don't want to disappoint y'all any further but i was convinced it'd be worth it for some of you, so here it is. it's angsty as hell.
> 
> enjoy.

She stumbles out onto the sidewalk, fumbling and falling into the cool night air like she’s already far drunker than she is, and pulls a cigarette out from her pocket. There’s a part of her screaming for her to wait, trying to remind her that anyone could walk out and see her here. Telling her that she’s not safe—that letting everyone know she smokes, letting everyone see she’s smoking _now_ , means baring more of herself than she’s really willing to. But still, she raises her undersized black lighter to the tip of it and inhales. Deeply. Slowly. The rush of nicotine is both stimulating and relaxing. Her mind somehow clouds over and clears at the same time. She exhales. Pauses. Inhales again.

 

She loses herself in the sensation of it—breath in, breath out, lungs clouded with smoke, lungs clear and compressed—sucking in the fumes of cars chugging past her on the busy street and the heavy hang of future rain in the air between bursts of nicotine. There’s a bang behind her and, god help her, she’d been so caught up in clearing her mind, in not thinking about Clarke, that it actually startles her.

 

“Jesus fucking Christ.” A familiar voice, a bit nasal but still deep. Another clatter of metal on wood.

 

Lexa looks behind her and stifles her giggle, smiles wide enough to show teeth. “Need a little help there, Des?”

 

“Next time, the crips get to pick where we go. I’m sick of this shit.” Des mutters, tugging hard on one wheel of her chair to try to maneuver through the door while holding it open with the other. She pauses, raises an eyebrow at Lexa. “You actually gonna help, or were you planning on just watching and making fun of me for not being able to get through the doorway?”

 

Lexa rolls her eyes but jumps to hold the door, anyway. “You don’t need my help to get through doors, Des. Not even the narrow ones.”

  
Des snorts. “No, not usually. But after a few drinks, it doesn’t hurt. Besides, this place was clearly not designed with accessibility in mind.” She glances up at Lexa’s face, then lets her gaze fall to her hand. “I didn’t know you smoke.” Before Lexa can even process the fact that she’s been caught, Des adds, “can I hit it?”

 

Lexa nods and extends the cigarette over to her. “Didn’t know you smoke, either.”

 

Des laughs, the smoke curling out of her mouth and around her nose, her almond eyes. “I don’t. Not since Donte was born, at least.”

 

Lexa nods, crosses her arms over her chest. “I started again this fall. First one in almost a decade.”

 

Des watches her curiously, tapping her empty hand against the arm of her chair. “So why did you? Start again?”

 

Lexa motions for the cigarette, takes a deep inhale of smoke and lets it out slowly through her nose. “Clarke came back,” she says, flicking the end to send a flurry of ash to the ground. “I quit because she hated it.” After a beat of silence, she adds, “plus, how was I supposed to tell the kid not to smoke when I did it? That’s not fair.”

 

Des nods, though there’s something to her face that says she’s still waiting for something. Something cautious and caring and a little horrified, Like Lexa’s about to pour her heart out on this dirty, rain-washed street, like she’s going to cry it to the naked tree branches and the people in cars driving by, not even noticing they’re there. Like she realized for the first time that Lexa has _feelings_ and she’s not sure what to do about it.

  
But Lexa’s not going to do that, obviously. She has feelings, but she doesn’t need anyone else to know it. So she does what any normal person would do: she changes the subject.

 

“How is Donte, by the way?”

 

Des purses her lips, leans on one of the arm rests, watches the frustrated impatience of the string of cars behind a Prius trying to accelerate up a hill. “He’s doing okay. Rosie and I are back in our honeymoon phase, but it’s only a matter of time before she loses it about something else.” She sighs, runs a hand mindlessly over her hair until she reaches the end of a loc, then strokes it with the pad of her thumb. “We both make good money, we can afford to buy the kid a Playstation. And if it keeps him outta trouble…” She trails off then jolts a little, like she’d completely forgotten where she was. She looks at Lexa. “You should come by. I bet he misses you.”

 

Lexa nods. “Yeah. I’m swamped, but I’d like to see him. Staying clean isn’t easy.”

 

Des snags the cigarette from Lexa’s hand. Smirks. “It sure isn’t.” Lexa snorts but doesn’t respond, and Des adds, “speaking of old habits, how’re things going with the ex? Have you two made nice yet?”

 

Lexa crosses her arms petulantly over her chest when Des flicks the cashed cigarette butt into the street, suddenly all too aware of how naked she feels, how easily Des can see her. “Yeah. We’re fine. Friends, or something close enough.”

 

Des’ eyes are narrowed, parsing, evaluating. “You sure about that? Cause every time I talk to you, she looks at me like she wants to murder me.”

 

God help her, the thought makes Lexa’s heart thump a heady beat in her chest. Clarke, jealous. Clarke, wanting her. But no, she knows exactly where that road leads—questions on questions she has no answer for. It hurts, that disappointment. Seeing the aftermath, the betrayal she’d managed to avoid so many years ago. Not just seeing it once but over, and over, and over again. Like all the best drugs, an invincible high and then a sudden crash so painful and exhausting it feels like the world is ending. The worst part is, she wants to give Clarke what she wants, but it’s not hers to tell. Anya, Tris, the honor of their family, broken and anemic as it is… it’s not Lexa’s to take. She can’t do that to them. Not to mention, her own shame, all the signs she’d missed. No, she can’t tell Clarke. Like Anya said, she made her choice.

 

She draws a breath, focuses on the plips of rain in a little gutter stream headed to the storm drain. Tries not to think of Clarke in her office, the feeling of finished wood under her palms, the twist of Clarke’s ire in her face. Tries not to think of the smell of firs on a fall evening, flannel blanket on her skin where her shirt had ridden up her back, Clarke’s eyes as clear as the stars in the darkness. Tries not to think of the way Clarke used to always bite Lexa’s thumb when she ran it over Clarke’s lips, how she’d soothe it with her tongue, how she’d smile afterward. How she’ll never know that exact feeling again, no matter who tries to replicate it.

 

“Clarke’s not the jealous type.” It’s a half-truth, meant to shake Des off the trail. Clarke’s jealous, but only in private. If not in private, then only when she really _wants_ something, and that’s definitely not the case here. Sure, Lexa can feel the lingering tension between them, she’s not completely unfeeling. But neither is Clarke, and she knows there’s so much pain between them there’s no way the affection is anything even approaching want for Clarke. “She was probably just in a bad mood. Stressed out by all the people.”

 

Des hums a noncommittal acceptance, then jerks her head toward the door. “It’s fucking cold.”

 

There’s no question in the words, but it’s plain on her face, so Lexa nods and pushes through the door, letting it fall shut onto Des’ legs.

 

“Asshole!” Des’ cry is muffled through the door, but it’s satisfyingly hilarious to Lexa anyway, and she pulls open the door.

 

“All you had to do was say please.” She grins with satisfaction as Des moves past her.

  
“Please go fuck yourself.” Des shoots back, rolling her eyes,  though there’s a small smile at the corner of her lips .

 

Des goes to the bar for another drink and gets caught up talking to a friend (having friends who are social can be irritating like that), so Lexa finds a seat at one of the tables next to Monty, who smiles thinly at her and says nothing. She doesn’t push it — it’s not like she’s champing at the bit to have a conversation, either. She rubs her hands together, trying to force out the chill that’s settled into her fingertips from the frigid humidity. Her eyes flit from table to table, looking to see who’s still standing and who’s tapped out. Not looking for Clarke.

 

(Totally and completely looking for Clarke)

 

God, she’s fucked.

 

She doesn’t see her, and even that’s probably a blessing, a chill prickles over her skin in tiny goosebumps. She shifts, trying to calm herself. Clarke is probably in the bathroom. Living her life. Lexa shouldn’t be looking for her in the first place. She’s a little drunk, straddling the border of reckless and emotional and that’s a bad combination for her and Clarke. They’ve been there. Clarke’s probably fine, and Lexa’s just being weird and overprotective. She gets that way, she knows that. But the feeling is still nudging at her, crawling underneath her skin, sitting uncomfortably in the pit of her stomach, tightening the muscles in her shoulders and face. She turns to Monty.

 

“Do you know where Clarke went?” She asks, forcing her face impassive. It’s normal, to ask where people are, right? To be concerned for their well being? Monty wouldn’t care either way.

 

He shrugs, not looking up from where he’s pushing the ice around his drink with one of those tiny little mixing straws. “I think she and Karen went to the bathroom.” He looks at her now, some realization dawning across his features. “Like, a while ago.”

 

She’s out of her chair in a second, stalking down the hallway toward the bathrooms like a panther, fear setting into rage in her chest. If Karen has fucking touched her…

 

She doesn’t even make it to the bathroom. They’re in a corner, Clarke leaning bodily against the wall, smiling lazily, a hand on Karen’s shoulder. And Karen has an arm blocking Clarke’s path—not menacing but dominating, making her intentions clear. They’re too close together for Lexa’s comfort. She stops, her nostrils flaring, trying to keep herself from ripping the hand lain possessively on Clarke’s hip clean off. She’s saved from having to figure out what to do, though, when Clarke notices her. And  _beams_ .

 

“Lex!” She lurches forward, catching Karen off guard and knocking her back a bit, her arm moving off the wall to stabilize herself on the one behind her. “We were just talking about you!”

 

Lexa does her best to hide the pleased thrill that shoots through her at that. Karen had spent all night trying to flirt with Clarke, and all they were talking about was Lexa. She doesn’t need any more invitation than that, and moves into the space Karen’s arm had just occupied—not as close to Clarke, but close enough to make it impossible for her to do it again. Her hand slips from Clarke’s hip to hang limply beside her.

 

Lexa’s eyes roam across Clarke’s face, seeking some semblance of assurance that she’s okay, that nothing had happened that she didn’t want to happen. She just keeps smiling at Lexa like she’s the first sunny day after a long, dark winter. “Is that so?” She asks, glancing between the two of them. “All good things, I hope.”

 

Clarke snorts. It’s a little mocking, a little teasing. A glint in her eye, a ghost of a smile on the corner of her lips. Then those eyes darken just the slightest bit. “Only the best things.”

 

Lexa jolts, swallows down the feeling because they are drunk and Clarke is in a relationship with someone else and she needs to be good because Clarke won’t. At least her Clarke wouldn’t have been. Nope, that line of thought is not helping her with impulse control.  _Swerve, Lexa. Swerve._

 

Karen shifts next to her, interrupting her focus from Clarke’s eyes, from the way they’d held hers so gently, so intently. Karen mumbles something about having to go to the bathroom and slips away, and Lexa doesn’t think Clarke even notices.

 

Clarke straightens and immediately starts to sway before falling back against the wall. “I’m drunk” Clarke chuckles out softly, cheeks burning red from the alcohol and embarrassment and maybe something else that Lexa doesn’t want to hope for. “Will you take me home?”

 

She’s so… innocent in that moment. Vulnerable. Something swells in Lexa’s chest, a protectiveness, a care. She steps forward and slips her arm around Clarke’s waist so she can steady herself while she stands up straight again. The attraction isn’t gone, but it’s moved to the backseat. They’re not flirting anymore, but Lexa is still shaking as she orders a Lyft and leads Clarke to the door.

 

It's late when they finally get to Clarke’s hotel. So late there are barely cabs on the road, much less traffic and Lexa’s grateful for the quick drive and the relative quiet of the night as she helps Clarke out of the car. It had been a quiet, intense ride. For Lexa, at least. Clarke had all but fallen asleep against her shoulder, and their driver was kind enough to leave them be, nothing but the rumble of the engine and the soft crooning of a pop song in the background to interrupt the moment. Lexa had taken the time to study Clarke’s face, peaceful in a way Lexa hadn’t seen in so long. There was something ethereal about the moment—fleeting and soft and perfect. She let her heart swell, she let herself feel without judgment. For once, she lets herself think it without repression or reprimand.

 

_I never stopped loving you._

 

Clarke stumbles into her suite, turns on one of the bedside lamps and nearly sends it crashing to the ground when she leans too much weight on it. The light casts the room in a soft yellow glow, a salve against the bright white sheets on the bed and the walls. Clarke pushes her suspenders off her shoulders and wiggles out of her pants to reveal long, soft legs and Lexa feels the burn of a blush on her cheeks when she can’t stop thinking about the way her fingers look pressed into Clarke’s thighs. She looks away, at anything but Clarke. She feels like an intruder, like a creep. Clarke is beyond trashed and surely wouldn’t be doing this in front of her sober. Clarke starts to unbutton her shirt, fingers clumsy, unfocused, and frustrated.

 

Lexa is backing up toward the door (she hadn’t gone very far inside in the first place), and working hard to keep her eyes on anything but her half-naked ex-girlfriend. She’s just about to announce her exit when Clarke huffs and pouts and glances up to try to catch Lexa’s eye. “Help.” She squeaks, dropping her arms to her side in an exaggerated gesture of forfeit, and Lexa is so torn. Torn because it’s incredibly endearing, and because she thinks this could go a whole host of very bad ways. She hesitates, and Clarke rolls her eyes. “It’s not anything you haven’t seen before, Lex. Don’t make it weird.”

 

Lexa takes a deep breath, steeling herself, and finally lets herself enter the room and come to stand in front of Clarke. Her hands are shaking again because, fuck, she _loves_ this girl and she’s undressing her, and it should feel good, feel familiar, feel right. They should be laughing and kissing and making jokes, ten years into a relationship and more connected than ever.

 

But they’re not, and it’s never been more obvious to Lexa than right now exactly what she gave up that day. She starts by unbuttoning Clarke’s cuffs, taking each hand gingerly in turn, only letting her hands linger as long as they need to to get the job done. Then, she shifts her attention to the front of the shirt. The first button pops open, and Lexa can’t breathe. Another, and tears start to sting in the back of her eyes. Another, and her nostrils flare with the effort of keeping it to herself. The only sound in the room is their breathing, close and heavy and stuttering. Finally, she gets to the last one and pushes the shirt off Clarke’s shoulders. It hits the ground with a soft ruffle and it’s silent again. Lexa’s eyes flicker back up to Clarke’s and her stomach twists.

 

Clarke’s crying, too. Silently.  Barely. But it’s there—tear tracks and eyelids brimming with tears.

 

“I should go.” Lexa says, feeling suddenly tired and panicked and totally out of control.

 

She moves to leave but Clarke catches her wrist, pulls Lexa back to face her. Her thumb travels to stroke the pulse throbbing rapidly in Lexa’s wrist, watching them touch for a second like she can’t believe it’s really happening, tears still dripping off her chin. She glances back up to meet Lexa’s eyes, and they’re frantic and wild and teary, an animal cornered. But Clarke’s? Clarke’s are a deeper blue than Lexa can ever remember seeing them. Black holes that will swallow Lexa and crush her until she’s  unimaginably small , and then some.

 

“I just want to sleep.” Clarke says quietly, her voice determined but unsteady. “I hate sleeping alone.” She backs up until she hits the edge of the bed, but she doesn’t stop pulling until they’re flush up against each other. Lexa’s heart is stuttering against Clarke’s—both of them so loud and so strong, even though Lexa feels so, so weak. Clarke must feel her tense because she adds, “you owe me this.” There’s a tinge of venom souring the edges and Lexa relents. Then, soft and fangless, almost pleading. “Just hold me.”

 

How can she say no? She exhales, trying to steady her breathing, and tips her chin in a nod. She reaches past Clarke to pull down the sheets and let her climb inside, and Lexa kicks off her shoes and climbs in after her,  turning off the light before settling her chest against Clarke’s back, fitting their hips together the way they used to. It feels every bit the same as it did five years ago. Clarke’s breathing evens out quickly and she starts snoring lightly, but Lexa can’t sleep. Her body is utterly alive everywhere it’s pressed up against Clarke’s, and she can’t remember the last time she felt this way about anybody. This scared of anybody.

 

She presses her face into Clarke’s hair and inhales, the smell mostly alcohol and body odor at this point, but there’s even something alluring and familiar in that. She squeezes her eyes shut, focusing on the calming scent, trying to keep herself from crying against Clarke’s neck. She tries to pretend nothing had happened, that all this time hadn’t passed, that her life hadn’t fallen apart. She tries to pretend she didn’t give up the one girl who had ever loved her the way she wanted to be loved, the only girl she had ever loved the way she wanted to love someone. She tries not to wonder what it means, and whether she should be here at all, whether her heart will ever stop aching for the woman in her arms. The pretty rich girl she never expected, never wanted.

 

She tries not to wonder whether she will ever not feel broken again. The panic fades, slowly but surely, and she drifts into uncomfortable dreams of what feels like a past life.


	12. Awakening

Clarke wakes suddenly. Her room is still, quiet. There’s no light save the dim shafts that peek from behind the thick curtains of her suite, making the world around her a dim and dull grey. She blinks, feeling surprisingly alone. She could have sworn…

 

A trio of knocks sound through the room and she rolls to sit on the edge of her bed. The world tilts and swims a bit, but steadies once the carpet hits her feet, soft and solid beneath them. Beneath her. She sits there for a second, trying to make sense of what’s happening. The last thing she truly remembers is talking to Karen near the bathroom—her hand on Clarke’s hip, a body against hers in the darkness—but she’s totally alone now. She sighs. Tries to remember.

  
_Whap whap whap._ Clarke lets out a long, uneven breath, already tired from just the expectation of exertion, and rises to her feet. She’d expected to be more unsteady than she is considering how much she drank the night before, but she’s fairly solid. She must still be a little drunk. She knows from experience movement will hurt in the short term but help in the long term, so she starts shuffling to the door (luckily, she also realizes from the rush of cold air on her chest and legs that she’s practically naked and stops to throw on a shirt and sweatpants) and hopes she can dismiss the person on the other side and push through the discomfort to go for a walk afterward.

 

She swings the door open, and finds Octavia standing on the other side, a smile breaking across her face.

 

“Morning!”

 

She’s way too fucking chipper.  _She_ didn’t go out last night.

 

“Hey, O.” She rubs at her eyes, which seem to be taking everything in too dull and too bright at the same time. “What’s up?”

 

Octavia’s leaning against the doorway, lazy smile on her face. “Boss lady sent me to see if you still wanted to come with today.”

 

Clarke’s mind cycles through the meanings of the sentence, trying to understand. She gets that ‘boss lady’ is Lexa—there’s really no one else Octavia would admit to being her boss, not even jokingly—but what the fuck are they supposed to be doing today? And how the hell would Lexa be up before her when….

 

“Come with?” She asks, the edge of the memory taking hold but not forming. There’s a shimmer of an expectation that Lexa should be in this room right now, but she can’t for the life of her remember why with her brain still clouded over like it is. She leans her weight against the doorframe to try to balance the energy expended from just _thinking_ right now. “Where?”

 

Octavia’s smile twitches at the corner and she raises an amused eyebrow. “To the forest. The Olympics.” She says it like it’s plainly obvious. “For data collection?” Her mind catches on the words, recognizes them, and thankfully Octavia continues so she doesn’t have to fit it all together herself, “the rainy season’s gonna start soon and we have to get some baseline readings.” After a second of Clarke’s blank staring, she adds, with a frown starting to overtake the corners of lips which had been threatening a smile, “she said you knew.”

 

And then, suddenly, it all comes back in a rush. Their conversation about the data collection this weekend. Flashes of the night before, or maybe… a dream? Her mind stutters, unable to cope with the images. “Oh. Yeah.” She knows what Octavia’s saying, but it still feels jumbled. “Shit. Yeah.”  S he realizes she needs to be there, to do her job. Being there is her  _job_ . She straightens her spine, ignores the  exhaustion she feels, the recognition that it could get worse, the deep desire to hide in her bed for the rest of her day. “Do we need to go right now?”

 

Octavia pulls her phone out of her pocket and shrugs. “As soon as we can, but we can probably spare a bit.”

 

Clarke nods. “Okay, I’m just gonna shower quick.” She pushes the door further open and Octavia comes in. “Make yourself at home.”

 

Once she’s in the shower, the nausea hits her full-on and she has to sit for a minute, but eventually she forces herself to stand again and comes out dressed and ready to go.

 

The drive is awkward. Octavia lets her know everyone else has started driving ahead of them but they’re in vans while Octavia and Clarke are in the Jeep so they shouldn’t lose too much time. They don’t talk much. Octavia asks casually about the night before and Clarke can tell she doesn’t know anything about it. She relays the highlights—singing, talking to people. But she doesn’t mention what’s been bothering her this whole time, the empty feeling of waking up alone. She doesn’t think she can handle the judgment if it was a dream, much less if it actually happened. After a while, Octavia catches onto Clarke’s reluctance and drops the small talk.

 

It’s a chilly morning, and Clarke keeps her fingers shoved into her pockets or out against the blasting heaters, but she doesn’t mention the open windows. The top on the Jeep is flimsy and worn anyway, and Octavia doesn’t seem bothered, so she lets it be. They drive along, country music playing softly under the rumble of the engine, Octavia singing along softly. Her hand is out surfing the air, the other thrown lazily over the steering wheel, and Clarke envies her. There’s a lot about Octavia that drives Clarke up the wall, but there’s always been an ease to her that Clarke has always wished she could have. The way she can just _do_ things and not worry about the consequences, or the effects on others, or the opinions of others. She truly just does what she wants. Clarke’s always wondered what that might be like. If what she thinks might have happened last night did, what would it be like to just not care? To just enjoy it?

 

After a while, they turn onto some back roads where they move much slower. Paved roads through the forest turn into gravel, and then a packed dirt trail with an aluminum gate Octavia has to get out to unlock and move and, finally, a clearing. All the grad students are there with Lexa, Anya, and about thirty people she mostly doesn’t recognize. There are a few she’s seen from around the lab, hunched diligently over computers, but if she’d been introduced to them she doesn’t know them by name. They’re all huddled up in hoodies and sweaters, some with coffee cups in hands, others rubbing their empty ones together to keep warm. Lexa has a map spread out on the hood of a white passenger van with the grad students huddled around her, speaking and pointing with purpose. She barely looks up when the jeep rumbles to a stop in front of her.

 

Clarke and Octavia climb out, and Clarke’s stomach drops at the sight of her ex-girlfriend.

 

“Clarke. Octavia. Glad you could make it.” Lexa says, and it sounds as genuine as Lexa at work ever does—clipped and professional. Octavia salutes and comes to look at the map, which Clarke can now see is marked into four separate zones with a bright red marker. Lexa nods. “All right, team four is with leads Tom and Kat. Team three is Cali and Yaz. Team two is Lincoln and Octavia. Team one with Anya and I. Everyone know their assignments?”

 

The people she doesn’t recognize start to move to different vans, the grad students identified moving out. Lexa walks over to where Clarke had lingered by the Jeep. “I was thinking, Clarke, that you would come with me. Unless you would feel more comfortable with Octavia?”

 

Lexa is steel. She’s utterly impenetrable in so many ways, and yet so obvious in others. Her body is rigid, tall, professional. But her eyes— damn , her eyes—they’re liquid and bright and so insecure. Maybe, Clarke begins to let herself think, just maybe something really  _did_ happen the night before. Maybe they did really—  s he snaps herself to attention. She’s working right now, no time for those thoughts.  She knows what the correct response—the professional response—is, so she swallows down her nerves and all the impulses screaming at her to keep her distance.

 

“You’re the lead on this grant, I think I should go with you.”

 

Lexa nods. “All right, everyone.” She raises her voice a final time and every single person in the group lifts their heads to look at her. It doesn’t seem to phase her in the slightest as she turns to take in their expectant, ready gazes. “Be efficient, but don’t forget to keep your walkies and mace near you. I don’t want any accidents on my watch. Understood?”

 

There’s a vague murmur of agreement, and it strikes Clarke for a moment how devoted everyone is to her. Like warriors on a battlefield. It sends a shiver down her spine, though whether the goosebumps spreading across her arms are eerie or pleasurable, she can’t say.

 

Everyone moves in a jumble until they’re all in their respective vehicles, and the vans start with rumbles and take off back down the path to places unknown to her. Lexa and the group they’re with move into the forest on foot and Clarke follows, queasy despite the sandwich and coffee she and Octavia had stopped for on the way up. Eventually, Anya breaks off with a nod to Lexa, and the undergrads follow. Lexa doesn’t say anything, just starts digging into her pack. Clarke watches as Lexa takes stakes connected with ribbon to cordon off a large section of the forest. She can see Anya and the rest of the team disappearing into the trees. Eventually, even the barking of Anya’s voice becomes eclipsed by the rush of river somewhere distant, of life existing in ecosystem, and she and Lexa are left in silence together.

 

Lexa places a final stake in the ground, finishing a perfect square of space. She steps on top of it with a heavy-soled boot, and leans so much weight onto it she nearly stands up straight on top of it. It sinks slow and hard into the ground. Clarke sidles up behind her, says simply, “mace?”

 

Lexa doesn’t look back at her,  doesn’t need to clarify . “Yes, there are animals  that call this forest home .  They don’t always take kindly to intrusion. ” She doesn’t seem bothered by this at all, and Clarke almost says something before she continues, “cougars, and bears. They’ re mostly  more afraid of us than we are of them, but occasionally we’ll come across one who is more enticed by the food in our packs than the danger we pose.”

 

Clarke frowns. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to her there were animals here, at least not dangerous ones. This is a National forest, after all.  People camp here. Families, with small children. How could it not be safe? “ Cougars and bears?” It’s not so much an actual question as it is a cartoonish gulp of fear, and she sees an amused smirk quirk briefly at the corner of Lexa’s mouth.

 

“Don’t worry. Stay close, I’ll keep you safe.”

 

Lexa spends the next few hours showing her the ropes, the way she carefully and delicately records every plant, every insect, every footprint in the dirt of the forest floor. Every tree, every species and subspecies. And then, she peels back the bark a bit, takes notes on the health of the trees. She’s painfully meticulous. She explains the way they’ll extrapolate from the data they collect, the way they take small samples of different areas to make estimations of the whole forest. She takes samples from the soil, from the leaves, from the bark. Clarke nods along, tries to keep up. Lexa’s knowledge of plant species has always been impressive but it’s only grown. Common names, Latin names, whether they’re invasive or native, healthy or unhealthy. Insects, whether they’re harmful or helpful. She tries to include Clarke, to ask her to help identify things, but it’s clear it’s a kindness. Clarke is completely out of her element.

 

It takes very little time (well, little time in terms of a scientist, it feels like forever to Clarke, who just watches the shadows shift on the forest floor) at all for Lexa to cover half of the ten by ten plot they’ve staked out. She stops, places a marker, then pulls out some water and sandwiches from her pack. She hands some to Clarke and they sit leaning against the base of a tree, eating in silence for a while.

 

“I’m glad you decided to come.” Lexa says, picking some hanging crust off of her sandwich and popping it into her mouth thoughtlessly. She doesn’t look up when she says it, which is… strange. Unlike her to shy away.

 

Clarke shifts so that she’s angled more toward Lexa and just takes her in for a second. She looks beautiful today, her hair pulled back and away from her face, shadows and reflected sunlight playing against her sweat-sheen, toned arms, the loose way her arms and legs are situated—for once, not rigid at all.

 

“I am, too.” She replies. “I can see why you like it out here so much.”

 

Lexa snorts and finally turns to catch her eye. “Is that so?”

 

Clarke smiles, nods. “It’s… peaceful. Quiet. But beautiful.” Then, before she can think better of it, before her exhausted mind actually catches up with her stupid damn mouth, she adds “like you.”

 

Lexa inhales sharply, eyes still locked onto Clarke’s. She swallows, looks for all the world like she’s about to say something, but then… She crumples up the empty saran wrap in her hand and stands, putting her garbage into the backpack.

 

“We should probably get back to work.” She glances up to the sky for effect, as if she’s tracking the sunlight. “We’re losing daylight fast.”

 

And then she’s back to work like nothing happened and Clarke is kicking herself for letting that slip. To be honest, the thought hadn’t even been a conscious one, just a logical conclusion. Of _course_ she thinks Lexa’s beautiful. Most people do. That doesn’t mean she has to say it out loud. But now the thought’s there, and she can’t stop noticing it in a way she hadn’t since even before their breakup. The strength of her shoulders, the slight softness around her hips, her large, green eyes, and those full, pouty lips. She couldn’t be blamed for falling victim to that in a drunken stupor, could she? Or, had she? Or had it been Karen, pretty in her own way but a poor substitute for the person she’d really wanted. There’s only one way to know for sure.

 

Lexa’s at the last corner when the question that’s been lingering in the back of Clarke’s mind threatens to burst from her lips. _Lexa’s hands pushing her suspenders off her shoulders._ _Lexa’s_ _fingers trembling_ _at her throat, unbuttoning her blouse. Lexa’s arm around her waist, Lexa’s nose in her hair._ Could it have been a dream? Clarke isn’t sure. It’s just so vivid, more so than any of her dreams have ever been hours after having it.  
  
“Lex, can I ask you something?”

 

Lexa hums absentmindedly, her fingers delicately cradling some leafy ground cover that looks very much like every other leaf Clarke has seen before in her life, turning it over and over and taking in every detail.

 

“Did anything...” She doesn’t quite know how to phrase it without seeming awkward or confrontational. “...happen between us last night?”

 

Lexa’s shoulders tense and, wow. That was not what Clarke was expecting from miss cool, calm, and collected. She had managed to all but convince herself the whole thing was a product of her own fucked up psyche.

 

“What do you mean?” Lexa doesn’t stand, though there’s something—a twitch or a shudder, Clarke can’t tell where it starts or ends.

 

She sighs. “I had a dream that you—that we...” She trails off again. There’s something that her mind won’t let her access, something between the  flashes of memory , something altogether frightening she thinks maybe her subconscious has chosen not to  make available to her . And she thinks Lexa wouldn’t  _do that_ but also maybe they were both drunk, maybe she made all the moves because  _fuck_ ,  if the last few weeks have taught her anything, it’s that there’s  still something  undeniable and primal and hurt that throbs between them.

 

Lexa’s shoulders tighten even more. Clarke didn’t think that was possible. “We didn’t have sex,” Lexa says swiftly, “if that’s what you’re implying.”

 

A blush burns through Clarke’s skin, lighting up her otherwise dull and aching body. “No, I—I know.” She’s stuttering through the surprise, trying to gain a leg up despite the utter lack of control she feels, the way it’s spiraling out of her hands. “But I remember you being there.”

 

Lexa finally stands and tucks the small notebook into her back pocket, turns to face Clarke. She holds her gaze for a minute before speaking. “You asked me to take you home, asked me to help you undress, asked me to stay. You said—“ her voice cracks briefly—almost unnoticeably—before she clears it and continues, “that you hadn’t been sleeping and needed someone there to help. So I stayed.”

 

Clarke’s head rushe s with the information. It  _hadn’t_ been a dream. She had asked Lexa to stay. What the fuck had she been thinking?  _The same thing you think every night_ . Her mind echoe s back to her, and her throat stop s up.

 

“And you left?” She tries not to sound desperate, tries not to sound hurt. The words come out even and measured, and a part of her is both smug and hateful at how cold the words seem, even to her. “You didn’t wake me up to bring me here?”

 

Lexa hasn’t looked away from her once and it’s starting to scare her, but she can’t look away now, either. “I couldn’t sleep.”

 

“Oh. Okay.” It’s unsatisfying, but Clarke isn’t sure what to do, what else to say. There’s no reason Lexa should have stayed, having fulfilled what Clarke asked of her. So she does nothing, just keeps holding Lexa’s gaze, keeps feeling like she’s another tap away from cracking.

 

After a half a minute of silence, Lexa goes back to finishing up her corner and Clarke stays silent, feeling embarrassed and exposed. She watches the way Lexa stays tense, the way she taps absentmindedly at her lips with the cap of her pen. She watches Lexa’s back shift beneath her thin shirt. Her hoodie had long ago been tossed to the side because of the heat of exertion and the sun that continues to rise and shine through the leaves.

 

Clarke shivers, the wave something totally familiar and unrecognizable at the same time. Her core tightens, and suddenly it all hits her. The longing emptiness of the moment she woke, the lingering discomfort of the day, her sudden noticing of her attraction to Lexa, what it would’ve meant if it had all been a dream, or if it hadn’t. If she had slept with Lexa, or if she had done more than that? The shiver awakens it all and she realizes it wasn’t unwelcome. She knows she wants Lexa, she’s known it for a while. Lexa has always been—as Raven has put it—the bane of Clarke’s existence. Or, at least, the wanting of her has been.

 

See, Clarke is controlled, has been since childhood. She’s a good girl. Raised right, that’s what everyone always said. Led around by her mother at black tie galas, ‘such good manners,’ they’d say as they wiped crumbs from their bushy beards onto their tuxedos. In high school, she’d given into lust but never had it been something she didn’t know and choose. She never did drugs, always did her homework. Hell, she didn’t even _drink_ until college. But with Lexa, it had been different. She hadn’t chosen Lexa, at first. But what she had with her had wormed its way into her heart deeper than she could’ve imagined. It was completely out of her control. Completely the force of the universe, of Lexa’s will and, if she’s being honest, of her own deep desires bursting from their bridles.

 

But she’s with Finn. And Finn is a choice. And that is what Clarke wants, to _choose._ Because Finn never makes her feel out of control, never scares her the way Lexa does. He’s logical, he’s sensible, he’s safe.

 

He’d never leave her wanting and injured and confused the way Lexa did.

 

“I’d like to show you something.” Lexa says, standing again, not tucking her notebook in her back pocket this time, but instead walking around the stakes to put it in the backpack resting in the opposite corner.

 

Clarke nods, and Lexa motions with her head toward the trail. They walk for a few minutes—Clarke has never felt as unfit as she does as they climb the trail—and keep going until they pull up alongside the roots of a tree larger than both of them. It’s humbling, and incredible, but Lexa doesn’t even pause until they’re toward the part of a trail that curves around its tip. Lexa climbs atop the tree—the can of mace hanging from her belt clanking loudly against her keys—then stops, and holds out a hand to help Clarke up.

 

They stay silent as they walk along the log until they’re back at the roots. And Clarke had been so preoccupied with keeping her balance that she hadn’t noticed. Not until Lexa stood tall and turned to face away from the trail they’d walked along. On the other side, there’s a series of switchback trails leading down, down, down, down, down. And beyond that, the tops of trees, and beyond that…

 

The glint of a river carving a glittering snake through the green, driftwood and stone tracing the way alongside. There’s the tops of trees on the canyon across the river, then a stunning blue dotted with perfectly white clouds, the threat of gray on the very outskirt stretch of the horizon. Her breath comes fast, and she gasps to keep up with it. It’s utterly _gorgeous_ and for a split second she finds herself wondering again why she never came here with Lexa before, despite all of her begging. Because before it was beautiful in its stillness, but _this—_ this is beautiful in its motion, in its _life_.

 

But Lexa isn’t paying attention to the view, not really. Clarke’s sure she’s seen it a million times. She has knelt on the trunk, her fingers tracing the veins of a small leaf growing through a crack on the giant log they’re standing on.

 

“It’s a nurse log.” She explains, then pulls at the leaf, plucking it from the twig. “From its death comes new life.” She holds it out to Clarke, who takes it.

 

It’s such a small thing, the leaf, so fragile. It makes her feel the same, and she’s shaking without any way to stop it. “Why?” She says, and tears spring to her eyes, not fully understanding why she herself is doing anything anymore. She feels like the day, the forest, Lexa, her memories of the night before, they’ve all broken her resolve into nothing. She feels the way she did on the day Lexa left her. Empty. Hurting. Longing.

 

Lexa begins to launch into an explanation, but that’s not what she _means_ god damn it, and she starts to shake harder.

 

“No.” She explains, “why did you stay?” She shakes her head vehemently, hoping it’ll keep the tears from coming, hoping fanning the anger sparking in her chest will make her own feelings make some damn sense for once, or at least keep her from feeling like this.

 

Lexa takes a few seconds, but eventually she answers, her words soft and unsure. “You said I owed it to you.”

 

But it only makes the anger rise harder. “You owe me so much more than that!” Because there’s nothing satisfying to her anger about Lexa doing the bare minimum, because their moments the night before, as hazy as they are, are romantic. She remembers now the clarity of the tears in Lexa’s eyes as she undressed her, remembers the nose in her hair tickling her scalp as she inhaled the smell of her, remembers the way Lexa’s grip had tightened around her abdomen, had fitted their hips together more tightly. And she can’t help it, it all comes back, _why aren’t we together right now?_ _If it’s not a lack of love, then what?!_ You owe me so much more than that.

 

Lexa looks away, can’t meet her eyes for a minute. But it’s not like Lexa to shy away. So she waits. Wants to force her to respond, to say something. She doesn’t get to run away from this, not again.

 

Finally, Lexa responds. “Clarke, lets not do this.”

 

Anger flares thick and suffocating in Clarke’s chest and throat. “No.” She snaps. “No, _fuck_ that. You stayed. Why would you do that?”

 

Lexa sighs, her head hangs, her hands fall limp between her knees. “You know why.”

 

“No, Lexa, I don’t.” The words come out biting and harsh and Clarke couldn’t care less. She reaches into her pocket, where she keeps the paper she’d written on with Dr. Kane, but it’s not there. In her rush to get ready, she must have forgotten it. She thinks of it, lying on the floor in the pocket of her slacks. Slacks Lexa had pushed from her hips before climbing into bed beside her.

 

Then Lexa stands. They’re about the same height, but in her boots Lexa has always had a slight advantage. That, plus the straightness of Lexa’s spine, the slight elevation of the log she stands on, makes her tower over Clarke.

 

“It benefits no one to have this conversation.” She says, words clipped. “Let it go.”

 

That’s the worst thing she could possibly say, of course, because Clarke doesn’t let anyone tell her what to do, not anymore. “It benefits me.”

 

Lexa’s nostrils flare. “And why is that?” She snaps back, “what could you possibly gain from me saying it out loud? You know why.”

 

“No, Lexa.” She grinds out between set jaws, takes a step forward to crowd into her space, to glare her down. “I really don’t.”

 

They stare at each other for a few seconds, until Lexa’s resolve finally breaks. Her words come out soft in volume, but hard in tone. “It doesn’t matter whether I say it or not, Clarke.”

 

They’re still looking one another in the eye, and Clarke’s heart is breaking all over again. She hates it. “It _does_ matter.” She hates how plain her feelings are in her voice. _Emotions do not have a beginning or an end…_ “It matters to me, knowing why. Why won’t you just tell me?” She sounds desperate to her own ears. Fuck, is she desperate.

 

Lexa, for the first time in their conversation, reels back—just the tiniest bit. “You’re with someone else. It’s been years. And we have to work together now,” she looks away for the first time, takes a deep breath. When she looks back, Clarke can see the tears in her eyes so clearly, the way they obscure the deep green of her irises. Clakre hates that. “We need to focus on that, not on answers that serve no purpose but to rehash old hurt.”

 

Clarke hangs her head, shakes it. “Maybe coming here was a bad idea after all.”

 

Lexa snorts like it’s obvious. “Maybe it was. But here we are.”

 

After a few seconds, Lexa pulls the walkie from her belt and it bursts staticky when she presses the button. “Teams, report in.”

 

They make a plan to meet back at the vans. She and Lexa make their way back, don’t talk the whole way. They don’t talk when Lexa pulls up the stakes and retrieves their packs, they don’t talk when they get there, or when they’re standing around waiting for all the groups to reassemble. The whole time Clarke aches for something. For resolution, for care, for some acknowledgment, some explanation.

 

She doesn’t get one.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey all, just a big ole heads up that this chapter deals a bit with child abuse, drug use, and triggers. take care of yourself please bbs

Lexa had been alone the vast majority of her life, before she met Anya. She was an unusually mature and bright child, only spoke when spoken to, quick to flinch away, unpopular with the other kids because even the most innocent of offenses was met with fists. Sure, she had her father. But that relationship was… complicated, at best. Her mother had left when she was almost too young to remember. No one runs away from home because their life is all sunshine and rainbows, after all.

 

But after she met Anya—who was known widely as General back then—everything changed. With Anya came Sienne (who went by Outcast), then Oasis (whose real name is a mystery to everybody except maybe Sienne and Zoran) and finally Gustus. Gustus was known back then as Beegee, though no one seemed clear on whether that stood for Big Gus or Bodyguard. See, life on the streets is hard. And Gustus had a penchant for taking care of young girls.

 

He’d always been marginally housed—never necessarily homeless—a crust punk with a dreadlock mullet and his own tattoo machine who always managed to find a place to crash for him and whatever girl he was looking out for on any given night. At first, it would be a different one every night or few months. When he started seeing Anya, that all changed.

 

He was a man well into his twenties, and Anya was a young woman just ending her teens. But they fell in love. Hard and fast and passionate. Sometimes they’d fight, but mostly it seemed like a match made in heaven. Half the tattoos on Lexa and her friends’ bodies were his, momentos of nights blurry from whatever they could get their hands on, whatever was their drug of choice. Lexa and Anya had been partial to heroin and oxy, whatever would numb the storms inside of them. Oasis and Gus loved coke and speed, and Sienne—who was just a pothead with an occasional penchant for alcohol—mostly abstained. They all drank, though, of course. They all partied. It was fun, back then, it was a distraction from the cold, from the shame, from the harsh reality they were living.

 

Lexa never would have guessed Anya’s love affair with the man they all considered a father figure would end up ruining her life.

 

The whole way back from the forest, she’s all too aware of his marks on her skin. His signature, black lines curling dark and thick around her body. She can feel them like they’re weights pressing into her ribs, her hips, her spine, her shoulders. The pain throbs in them along with her broken heart. She wishes he hadn’t ever existed. She wishes he’d died in infancy. She wishes she’d beaten him with her own two hands until the life bled from his face. She can’t tell the difference between the hating him and the pain of being so close to Clarke, who hasn’t spoken to her since they stood together on that log, since she’d asked Lexa to expose her heart.

 

She wants to scream, she wants to tear her skin off. It’s been rare for her to feel totally alone in this world as an adult, but right now every reminder of her chosen family is another bleeding wound her body doesn’t have the energy to clot.

 

So she watches from the corner of her eye, exhausted, as Clarke stares out the window on the drive back to the university, watches her make disinterested conversation with the grad students when they finally get back. Watches behind brooding eyes until Octavia returns, and her smile fades and turns grim, until she ushers Clarke out the door.

 

“What crawled up your ass and died?” Anya asks, falling into step beside Lexa as she makes her way from the lab.

 

And what is she supposed to tell her? That she hates Anya’s ex, that she wishes he’d never been born, that knowing his art will be on her forever makes her skin crawl, that he makes her wish sometimes that she’d never met Anya? That sometimes, she thinks it’d be better if she’d just died on the streets that first time she’d run away instead?

 

What kind of person would it make her to say that to her best friend, her closest confidante, her savior, the closest thing to family she’s ever had?

 

So instead she says, “nothing.”

 

Anya rolls her eyes, shoves her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “Liar.” They walk along in silence for another few moments before Anya adds, “Wanna get a drink?”

 

Lexa’s tempted to agree because _fuck yes she wants a drink_ , but instead she shakes her head. Anya rolls her eyes, says something that amounts in the end to “fine” and heads home.

 

* * *

 

 

_Clarke can hear the doorbell ringing inside the house, and she drops her hand to her side, squeezes Lexa’s with the other. She turns to look at her and smiles when she sees the grim line of her lips._

_  
“Babe, it’s gonna be fine.” She tries to smile wider without seeming disingenuous and it’s kind of easy because Lexa’s nerves are amusing. It’s just her mom after all, and it’s the holidays so she’ll be in a good mood. Once Lexa relaxes, it’s going to be fine. Her mom’s gonna love her._

 

_The door swings open and Abby’s face breaks into a grin. “Clarke!” She wraps her arms around her daughter, then pulls back to look over Lexa with a hesitant smile. “And you must be the girlfriend?” Lexa nods curtly and Abby waves them in, grabbing one of Clarke’s suitcases to drag behind her. “Come in, come in! Dinner’s just about ready.”_

 

* * *

 

 

“You know, I took your advice.” The pub is busy, but the bartender still takes the time to lean a thick hip against the wood between them and Lexa. They throw a towel—once white, now mottled with stains of every imaginable color—over their shoulder and cross their arms.

 

Lexa settles on the stool, pulls off her jacket to hang on the hook by her knees and leans onto her elbows on the bar. “Oh?”

 

Lexa’s not sure when they reached this level of familiarity, or why. Yes, she was in fairly often. She only lived a few blocks away. But still, it wasn’t like it was every day. One day, Jesse had introduced themself and Lexa had done the same. Then Lexa had told Jesse what she does for a living. Then Jesse had admitted to using they/them pronouns, and now suddenly the two of them were talking like they were old friends.

 

Jesse smiles. “Yeah, you can’t hear it?”

 

There’s a fair amount of people talking, making it hard to hear, but the twang of a Patsy Cline song is sounding through the speakers. Lexa smiles back at them and nods. “Leavin’ on Your Mind. Good choice.”

 

“Yeah. Very relatable.”

 

“Excuse me? Miss?” A man yells from the end of the bar, a credit card waving in the air.

 

Jesse rolls their eyes then looks over at Lexa, all the sparkle gone from their face. “Get ya something to drink?”

 

Lexa nods, “Ghost Owl, if your boss re-ordered. Jameson if he didn’t.”

 

“I got him to buy it just for you.” Jesse turns and pours her drink, dropping it in front of her and picking her card up off the bar. “And we’re not done with the music conversation.” They say, pointing the card at Lexa’s nose. “I haven’t even gotten to tell you about the _modern_ country I’ve been listening to.” Then they swish off with a grace that is oddly and uniquely their own to make nice with the man at the end of the bar who is looking somehow even more impatient than before.

 

The song clicks onto “She’s Got You” and Lexa sighs, feeling her shoulders slump further down. Patsy Cline has always reminded her of her mother, one of the few memories she has of that time in her life. They’re cooking something or baking something, Lexa can’t really remember. But she’s got her hands wrist-deep in dough and she’s kneading and her mom is calling directions to her like Lexa’s role is the most important in the dish. But what Lexa really remembers is her mother’s smile, her voice as she crooned softly along with Patsy. Patsy was always playing when she remembers her mother, even when she’s sure that having music playing in the memory would be absurd. Sometimes, Lexa even remembers Patsy playing after her mother left, at times that evoked her. Sometimes, she remembers thinking that her mother _was_ Patsy Cline, despite a significant age difference between the two of them, and the fact that they looked nothing alike.

 

Such is the folly of youth.

  

* * *

 

 

_Clarke is holding her cocoa between her hands nervously, rubbing it gently between her palms. At first, this had been to warm her fingers without scalding them, but the liquid has long since gone cold and now it’s just giving her something to distract from her nerves._

 

_Because as much as she’s acting like she doesn’t care? She does. And the coolness from earlier has dissipated._

 

_Lexa’s doing that thing where she stops talking around authority figures and falls to simple ‘yes ma’am, no ma’am’ answers, and her mom is doing that thing where she gives her significant others the third degree, and she just really, really wants her mom to like Lexa. It’s been a long time since Clarke has liked anyone as much as she likes Lexa._

 

“ _I’m from Washington state.” Lexa says, shifting slightly in her spot on the sofa. She’s sitting up perfectly despite the overstuffed sofa that Clarke knows from personal experience is so easy to fall into. This is the only sign that she’s uncomfortable, trying to make a good impression on her girlfriend’s mom. Anyone that didn’t know her would just think she’s rigid. “So I can’t really imagine ever leaving.”_

 

_Abby grunts a little, leans back. ““I see. Do you have family in the area?”_

 

_Lexa looks at Abby, unblinking. She swipes at a flyaway hair near her ear, tucking it neatly back into place. For the slightest second, Clarke worries, thinks she might snap. Because Lexa never talks about her family, unless she’s talking about Anya and Sienne and Oasis, and she’s got this frightened deer look touching her eyes, even though the rest of her face is totally normal. But she doesn’t. And in that moment, Clarke loves her even more. She knows her mother is a handful, and she knows Lexa can be impatient and self-righteous when she feels interrogated, but she’s nothing but smooth and calm right now._

 

“ _Sort of.” She says. Then, “excuse me. I am out of cocoa. Would you like some more?” They both shake their heads and Lexa disappears into the kitchen._

 

_Abby’s eyebrows raise and Clarke feels hers furrow because maybe she’d spoken too soon. And then Lexa is gone. There’s silence for a few moments where her mom just looks at her. Then Abby says, “did I do something wrong?”_

 

_Clarke shakes her head. She has no idea what’s going on with her girlfriend right now. “I’m gonna go check on her.” And she stands up and follows Lexa into the kitchen._

 

_She finds her leaning against the counter, staring down at her empty mug. She’s breathing heavily, agitated or upset in a way Clarke has never seen before. She takes a tentative step toward her. “Babe?”_

 

_Lexa doesn’t move, doesn’t twitch, just keeps staring at the mug, her shoulders hugged up to her ears. She takes a deep breath, her body so tense it barely moves, and says, “just give me a minute, Clarke,” through clenched teeth._

 

“ _Lexa, what’s going on with you right now?” Clarke takes another step forward, hesitant. She’s not far now, just a few feet, but Lexa doesn’t acknowledge her. “Please, just talk to me.” Lexa remains still, unresponsive. She reaches out a hand, touches Lexa’s shoulder gently, hoping it will bring her attention back to the conversation she’s trying to have. Lexa shudders and pulls away in the span of one second, and then her hands rocket up to shove Clarke away fiercely. She would’ve fallen if she hadn’t caught herself on the kitchen island. Clarke’s mouth drops open, and she grabs herself instinctually, as if she could protect herself retroactively from the force of the contact. But she can’t, they both know that. And so they both just stare at each other like neither can quite figure out what it means, Clarke’s palms throbbing with the impact, her heart racing, wondering what Lexa is going to do next._

 

_Lexa has never been like this before, and if she’s being honest? Clarke trusts Lexa, but she’s a little scared. She’s not sure she knows the person standing in front of her. There’s nothing soft in the green of her eyes now, nothing loving and familiar._

 

_Abby clears her throat from the doorway and both of their eyes snap to her. “Is everything okay in here?” Her tone and her face make it clear that things are most certainly not okay, despite what either of them have to say. Abby is the picture of motherly protection, fury written on her face, lips drawn tight. An amazon if one’s ever truly existed—if not in size and strength then in power and wrath._

 

_Clarke doesn’t feel fine but the last thing she needs is her mom to spring to her rescue. “Yeah, everything’s okay.”  
_

_Lexa clears her throat, mumbles something about needing to clear her head and rushes out the door so fast neither Clarke nor Abby can do or say anything and they’re left standing in the kitchen, watching the other warily._

 

* * *

 

 

It’s warm inside the bar, and loud, and it all hits Cali in a rush when she tugs the door open—a blast of energy that had been barely contained by the slab of wood and metal. It stuns her for just a second, keeps her halted at the door, letting it all wash over her before moving in, shouldering off her coat. She spots an empty seat at the bar and moves for it quickly, knowing it’s not likely to stay unoccupied for long. She looks for the bartender as she pulls out the stool, knowing catching their eye on a day this busy won’t be easy.

 

“This seat taken?” She asks the person next to her, still not really looking at her, still too busy trying to find the bartender.

 

“Would it matter to you if it was?” The woman responds, a light undercurrent of humor underneath the sternness. Cali freezes, a shock of terror running through her. She _knows_ that voice. “You already seem pretty comfortable.”

 

“Dr. Woods!” Her voice comes out in a squeak, all the cultivated coolness she’s done her best to portray in front of her boss gone in an instant. “I—I didn’t realize it was you. If you’re meeting someone, I can—”

 

Lexa just smirks and shakes her head. “Relax, Cali. I’m not meeting anyone.” She motions vaguely with her glass of something brown. “Drink in peace.” The glass lands with a soft thud on the bartop, and Lexa goes back to staring morosely into the last finger of it.

 

Cali orders, and pulls out her phone, but she can’t stop herself from watching Lexa in the periphery of her vision. She’s unwilling to look directly at her, sure that if she were to do that, Lexa would know she’s watching her. And if she knows she’s watching her, then she’ll probably get angry. But there’s something so un-Lexa-like about her right now, elbows on the bar, shoulders hunched, pout dragging at the corners of her lips, that she isn’t frightened of that so much as usual.

 

She finally works up the courage to ask, “what are you up to tonight?”

 

Lexa lifts her head and her eyebrow, and Cali notices the way she’s listing a bit to her left—she’s drunk, that much is for sure, despite how good she is at hiding it. She’s never seen Lexa with a tell before, and it sends goosebumps spreading across her arms, like she’s in on a secret no one else knows.

 

“Drinking.”

 

Cali chuckles, looks back down at her cider, wraps both her hands around the glass, making prints in the condensation. “Right. Of course.” There’s a secondary lull while she gathers her courage again because maybe this is an opportunity. She doesn’t know what for, exactly, but there are times when a person is at a precipice and must make a decision to let things stay the same or throw caution to the wind and jump into the unknown of the future. Or something.

 

So she jumps.

 

“I’m standing someone up.” She chuckles and brings the glass to her lips, a little tart but still mostly too sweet. She truly misses beer, but gluten really fucks with her stomach these days.

 

Lexa blinks at her, looking… surprised? Cali doesn’t think she’s ever seen that expression on Lexa’s face before. Except maybe once, earlier that day when Clarke had agreed to go out with her instead of Octavia. She’s noticing that Clarke being around has shown her a lot of parts to Lexa she hadn’t ever seen or expected before.

 

“Why?”

 

Cali clears her throat and shifts in her seat, feeling Lexa’s eyes on her so intensely it’s making the back of her neck sweat. She takes another sip (well, a gulp if she’s being honest) to calm herself down before answering. “I really like her, she’s cute.” She tests a smile, and when Lexa doesn’t scowl, she adds “like, _really_ cute. Hot. Funny. Nice.” She pauses, licks her lips, picks at a corner of the cardboard coaster under her drink.

 

She must take too long to gather her thoughts because Lexa says, “seems to me you like her.”

 

Something shuts down inside of Cali in that moment, like a switch flicking off—it’s that simple—and she snaps out, “she likes me too much.”

 

“And that...” Lexa’s brows furrow, “upsets you?”

 

It’s sort of funny, the range of expression on Lexa’s face right now, so many things she’s never gotten to see before. She thinks she likes Lexa, outside of work. She actually seems kind of nice. “I mean, she expects me to be there all the time. You know? She’s always sending me memes and wanting to make plans.”

 

Lexa shrugs. “I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

 

Lexa takes another sip of her drink and so does Cali, and for a minute they sit in silence. Something soft and country plays on the radio from somewhere above them, over the din of voices that threatens to drown it out. Cali’s never cared for country, she wishes there was something better on.

 

* * *

 

 

Lexa, where are you?

 

I’m worried.

 

No one is mad at you _. (That one is sort of a lie. Abby is livid with Lexa, has spent the good part of an hour hinting that Lexa is abusive, and Clarke isn’t exactly pleased about Lexa rushing out without a word of apology or explanation)._

 

You’re not familiar with this area, and I’m worried you might get lost. It’s cold. _(This one is significantly more true. It’s not like they’re in a bad area, but Lexa could easily get confused in the suburban streets and that worries Clarke)._

 

I love you. _(This is perhaps the truest thing Clarke has ever sent via text message)._

 

* * *

 

 

“What about you?” Cali immediately goes on the offensive, straightening and tightening her grip on her glass. Lexa already feels tired just anticipating the fight ahead. “You seem to be hanging around with our grant administrator quite a bit. And a little birdie told me she just so happens to be your ex.” She pretends it’s a lighthearted comment and not a barb by taking a sip of her drink through a smirk.

 

Lexa sighs, doesn’t take her eyes from her drink. “Nothing is happening between Clarke and I.”

 

There must be something in Lexa’s face she doesn’t mean to convey because Cali reaches out a hand and covers hers for a moment, before it twitches and pulls back. And Lexa sees it. The moment she’d been waiting for. The moment when Cali’s sympathy turned unwillingly and incontrovertibly into disgust and disdain. She’s not unfamiliar with the shift and as much as she tries to stay insulated from other people’s opinions, it hits her deeply.

 

She’s suddenly aware of the song playing, hears it deep within herself. _I_ _t's hard to deal with the pain of losin' you everywhere I go. But I'm doing it._ She chuckles softly to herself, shifts in her seat. Signals to Jesse who just so happens to look her way.

 

“Want another drink, hon?”

 

She nods, and Jesse swings their hips as they pour it, mouths the words as they drop it in front of her, pumping their free fist dramatically as they do. _What hurts the most, was being so close. And having so much to say._ They saunter away with a wink and Lexa feels a chill dust along her arms. Not because of Jesse, because of Clarke. (It always comes back to Clarke)

 

* * *

 

 

_Lexa texts before she comes back to the house. It’s late, hours after Clarke last texted her, but she’s unwilling to try the door to her girlfriend’s mother’s house to see if it’s unlocked. Instead, she does something familiar, the only thing she truly knows how to do. After a few minutes without response, she sits in the doorway, hides herself from the view of anyone passing by. She pretends like she’s not there at all. She’s far too accustomed to what happens in neighborhoods like this when you look out of place. But the door opens not a minute later, and Clarke stands there, mascara streaked across her cheeks. She doesn’t move, just looks at Lexa. She’s not even trying to hide her red-tipped nose or her tears or the tremble in her hands. And even though Lexa feels justified in walking away she also feels heartbroken at what she’s done to the woman she loves._

 

“ _Clarke.”_

 

“ _Lexa.” There’s a few beats of silence, then Clarke continues, “come in. You must be freezing.” When Lexa shakes her head, there’s another couple seconds of silence. Then Clarke disappears inside, leaving the door open so Lexa knows she’s not leaving her. She comes back with a blanket in her arms. “Can I touch you now?”_

 

_Lexa nods silently, and Clarke settles down next to her, pulling the blanket so it’s wrapped around both of them, her arm around Lexa’s shoulders. And Lexa leans in, feels herself start to tremble, though whether it’s from the cold or some release of fear she’s not sure. Despite the meaning, she finds herself burrowing in closer to Clarke’s warmth._

 

_She feels tears start to burn in the back of her eyes. “Clarke, I’m so sorry.”_

_  
Clarke shakes her head, the chin on top of Lexa’s head grinding against her scalp. But now, it’s more comforting than anything. “Don’t be sorry, Lexa. Just help me understand.”_

 

_Lexa takes in a deep breath through her nose, then exhales it slowly. She’s not quite sure where to start, but she knows it has to be somewhere. “The holidays have always been hard for me.” She says, because that seems good enough, obvious enough._

 

“ _I’ve noticed.” Clarke snorts. After all, they’ve been together over a year and she must have noticed how distant Lexa gets during this time of year. “Why did you freak out now?”_

 

_Suddenly, their closeness is suffocating and Lexa stands. Clarke just watches her, not saying anything, letting Lexa slip from her grasp without protest. Lexa starts to pace because there’s a nervous energy shaking in her body and if she moves, it’s not as noticeable. So she walks the five steps from one end of the porch to the other, hoping it’ll help the words come to her._

 

“ _I grew up in a house where I was to be seen, not heard. And when I was heard...” She pauses in both her words and her movements, looks out at the snow-covered street in front of Clarke’s childhood home. It’s beautiful, quiet, serene. It’s exactly what a childhood home should be. Clarke doesn’t say anything, and Lexa knows she has to finish her sentence. “...he’d….” How does she put it? How does a person distill years’ worth of pain into one sentence? “...hurt me.”_

 

_She’s not looking at Clarke, so she’s not sure what her reaction is, but she can guess. To be entirely honest, though, she’s still stuck in the memories, still shivering with anticipation of pain. Her childhood’s a bit of a blur, but the pain is what she remembers. Or, no. Not the pain, the waiting for it. She glances over her shoulder, but the angle doesn’t let her see Clarke’s face. It’s covered in shadows from the porchlight._

 

“ _Your mom?” Clarke says, quietly. “She didn’t protect you?”_

 

_Lexa shrugs, looks back out to the snow turned orangey-yellow from the streetlight, the cars half-buried in the latest snowfall. “She did, for a while. He didn’t hit me until she left.” A few beats, and she realizes Clarke is waiting for her to continue, so she says, “I was in kindergarten. One day, she just didn’t come pick me up. When he came to get me, I was crying. He tolerated it until we got home. Then he told me to cut it out, and when I didn’t, he...” She sighs, it’s so present and so distant at the same time. The details feel unimportant. “Look, it doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have done what I did.”_

 

_She hears rustling then feels Clarke’s presence behind her, but this time she makes no attempt to touch her. “It does matter. It’s an explanation, not an excuse. But if you tell me why, we can make sure it never happens again. And Lexa?” She waits until Lexa musters the courage to look over at her, turning slightly but not completely so they can see each other’s eyes, but Lexa could still run at any moment. “It can never happen again. Do you understand?”_

 

_Lexa nods. “Yes. Of course. I don’t want to hurt you, Clarke. I swear. I wouldn’t….” But she trails off, because she did. That unspoken truth hangs between them, dark and foreboding and oppressive. So she continues, because what else can she do? “Being here, it’s hard. I don’t know what to do with happy families.”_

 

_Clarke is closer behind her, asks “can I hug you? Lexa, please. I—”_

 

_But she doesn’t need to finish because Lexa’s catapulting herself into Clarke, holding her tighter than anyone she’s ever hugged before._

 

* * *

 

 

Clarke’s at a weird bar. Not one she’d ever be at back home, one that attracts people that aren’t writers, or ecologists, or anyone she’s ever dated or been friends with. And those have been the only kinds of bars she’s ever gone to. Because bars aren’t her first choice, but she often finds herself there. This bar is one that brings regular people, people like her old friends are now. There are bright lights and a beer pong machine in the corner (who wants to play beer pong by themself?) and bros in snapbacks and polos littering the space. But there’s also Octavia, and Lincoln, and Raven.

 

Raven’s smiling through her third beer, clearly already a bit tipsy. “So, how’s working with Commander Cool?”

 

Clarke rolls her eyes. “Commander Cool? Really?”

 

Raven shrugs, “you said I can’t call her the Ice Queen anymore cause that’s,” she pauses to make exaggerated finger quotes in the air, “‘a tired sexist trope.’ So I gotta call her something.”

 

Octavia’s quick to come to Clarke’s rescue. “How about Lexa?”

 

Raven sighs, “you guys are boooorriiiinnnggg.” She singsongs, but she’s smiling through it anyway. “Whatever, don’t avoid the question.”

 

Clarke fingers the sweating glass of vodka soda in front of her. “It sucks, honestly. She’s being such an ass.”

 

Raven _tsks_ and shakes her head. “Told you it’d be miserable. She’s a cunt.”

 

Clarke just stares blankly at her, still not believing that she couldn’t see how thoroughly not okay using her particular choice of verbage was. “ _Language.”_ She snaps, looking over for validation at Octavia (who looks completely unphased) and Lincoln (who is nodding along in grave agreement with Clarke).

 

“She’s actually a very good person when you get to know her...” Lincoln starts, but Octavia puts a hand on his arm and shakes her head.

 

“Tonight isn’t about Lexa, Linc.” She chides, “it’s about Clarke.” She looks back over to her friend. “And Clarke needs to hate Lexa right now. Right?”

 

Clarke lets out a noise that’s half-sigh and half-laugh. She’s also a little drunk, and yeah. She wants to hate Lexa. She needs it. But she doesn’t. There’s something very distinctly not-hateful about her right now. So instead, she changes the subject. “What Clarke needs right now is to not think about Lexa. So, Raven. You dating anyone?”

 

* * *

 

 

Cali is standing up to leave, a few minutes of conversation and a long bout of silence past the awkward moment when she’d seen Lexa. Not casually, but truly _seen_ her. For the sad, pathetic, broken thing she is right now. Over a relationship. She tries to push the thought out of her head, but it lingers. Lexa is not the fierce warrior she’d always assumed her to be. Instead, she is something whimpering, wishing for something she could never have again. She shudders, pulling her coat over her shoulders. She’s about to walk away before she turns, taking one final look at her mentor and her boss.

 

“We need you.” She says, and Lexa looks up from her drink. “ _I_ need you.” She looks toward the door, but decides to stay after half a second. “You’re Dr. Woods. You’re inspiring. You’re our leader. We _need_ that.” She sniffs. “You know?”

 

Lexa nods, but when Cali moves to leave, Lexa calls out to stop her.

  
“Cali!” Lexa’s face is open, untouched by cynicism for the briefest of moments. She looks down into her glass for a second before looking back up and saying, “be careful. One day you’re safe, protected by all those walls you’ve built, and the next you look and find there’s nothing left but your armor.”

 

It doesn’t quite make sense to her, right in that moment, but as she walks out she thinks it sinks in. She takes one last glance over her shoulder at the lonely figure at the bar, and texts the girl she’d been seeing.

 

_Running late, got caught at the lab. Be there soon._

 

* * *

 

 

_They’re laying in bed together that night, no sounds but the occasional car risking the holiday roads of suburbia, Clarke nestled into Lexa’s back. It’s nice, she smells just like she always has, it’s normal. She presses her face into the back of Lexa’s head, places a gentle kiss there._

 

“ _Hey, Lex?” It’s half a whisper, half something loud enough to wake her. She’s not sure which one she wants it to be. She’s craving Lexa’s affection right now, but it doesn’t seem fair to ask it after the night they’ve had._

 

_Lexa grunts, turns a little from where she’d been little spoon so she can see Clarke’s face. It creates, distance, but also intimacy, and Clarke pulls on her until she turns all the way and they’re facing each other. “What time is it?” She mutters sleepily, rubbing at her eyes, letting her hand fall on Clarke’s shoulder._

 

_It’s perfect, normal for them. It’s loving. It’s Clarke and Lexa._

 

“ _I love you.” Clarke moves in closer so that their noses are brushing and Lexa breathes out a chuckle._

 

“ _I love you, too.” She leans in for a kiss. “Did you wake me up just to tell me that?”_

 

_Clarke bites her lip, nods. And Lexa chuckles again. Then, her tone turns serious. “What do you need, darling?”_

 

_Clarke smiles. She nuzzles in against Lexa’s chest. “Just hold me?”_

 

“ _Of course.”_

 

_And they fall asleep in each others’ arms, and wake up the same way. And when Abby picks at their relationship the next few days, Clarke defends it with fiery passion. Because she knows she’s loved, she knows Lexa would never hurt her. She knows she’s found the person she wants to spend the rest of her life with, even if it takes negotiation, and work. She’s finally in love._

 

* * *

 

 

Lexa pauses at the door, paper bag clutched tight in her hand. She shifts, and the bag crinkles loudly in her sweaty palm. It had been an impulse, to buy the second sandwich. But still, she’d bought it. And now here she is. She has to knock, she sure as shit won’t eat two sandwiches. She breathes out slowly through her mouth before raising her hand and knocking on it steadily.

 

She hears Clarke’s voice, faded behind the door. “Come in.”

 

So she does.

 

“Hey.” She says, when it opens enough that she sees Clarke’s face.

 

It fades, instantly, from a tentative expectation to disappointment. It stings, a little—no, a lot—that she no longer makes Clarke smile when she shows up unannounced.

 

“Hey.” She comes in, even though it’s sort of unbidden at this point, and plops the bag down on the desk. She immediately begins rifling through it, to ease her own sense of discomfort with distraction. “I went to that place with the bahn mis you like so much and figured I’d get you one.” She finds the barbecue tofu one and places it down in front of Clarke. “I thought you might be hungry.”

 

There are a few beats where Clarke just looks at her, scorn clear on her face. Until finally she says, “okay.”

 

Lexa swallows hard, and starts to turn. “I should get back to it. Just wanted to bring this by.” She feels uncomfortable, so she’s talking too much, and Clarke isn’t saying anything. She realizes this whole thing was a very, very bad idea. So she finishes her turn and is almost to the door when Clarke speaks.

 

“What are you doing, Lexa? Why would you do this?”

 

Lexa turns back to her, takes her in. She’s tense, dark bags underneath her eyes, watching Lexa like she doesn’t trust her. It stings, to know that Clarke assumes the worst of her intentions, or at the very least doesn’t trust them.

 

She shrugs. “I just thought you might need lunch.”

 

Clarke snorts, and looks down at the sandwich without touching it. “What makes you think I’d want anything from you?”

 

Lexa just shakes her head, feels the words echo in an emptiness she’s starting to become all too familiar with. “I just wanted to do something nice.”

 

“Why?” The word is simple, but harsh, and Lexa winces. “You know when you could’ve done something nice? When you fucking left me for no reason.”

 

Lexa suddenly realizes something that hadn’t fully occurred to her before. This Clarke is a new creature, something borne of her own betrayal. This Clarke is hurting and angry and unreasonable. She has always known that Clarke can be this way, but it has so rarely been directed at her that it cuts deeply, it feels new and unfamiliar.

  
She sighs, still standing at the door. She shakes her head slightly. “Clarke.” She swallows, trying to find the right words. But do the right words for a situation like this exist? “I never meant to hurt you.” She thinks about Clarke, open and loving, the way she’d kissed her. She thinks of how open she’d been when they were together, waiting, open to the love Lexa had to give. Now, she’s something different. Something broken and hurt. Her heart sinks. There are words in her mouth that are unfamiliar, that hurt a little to say, but they come out anyway. “I’m sorry.”

 

Clarke scoffs and shakes her head. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think? You did hurt me, Lexa.” Her eyes are fiery, her nostrils flared. She’s raring for a fight, and Lexa doesn’t know if she’ll be able to move out of the way when Clarke charges. “You didn’t think leaving me would hurt me?”

 

Lexa blinks, feels tears burn in her eyes, but she doesn’t dare look away from Clarke. “I knew it would hurt you.” To her surprise, Clarke doesn’t immediately pile on her; instead, she lets Lexa gather her thoughts and finish them. “But you were always strong. Stronger than me. I knew it would hurt you, but I didn’t...” She turns and takes a step forward, then catches herself and stops abruptly in the middle of the room. “I didn’t know it would do this to you.” Clarke’s gaze has softened slightly, and there are tears shining in her eyes, too. And Lexa just stands there and breathes because she doesn’t know what else she can do. “I’m sorry, Clarke.” She clears her throat, forces herself to say the words she really doesn’t want to. “I’ll leave you alone, okay? Only work from here on out.”

 

Clarke doesn’t say anything, just keeps looking at her. Not for the first time, Lexa can’t tell if Clarke wants to hit her or kiss her. After seconds that feel like hours, Lexa turns again, readies herself to leave and not come back without an official reason, to close the book on her relationship with Clarke when Clarke blurts out, “I thought they’d closed.” Lexa turns back and blinks at her, unsure of what to say or even what Clarke is talking about. “I drove by and it was a burger joint.”

 

The sandwiches, right. Lexa clears her throat, tries to force her mind to say words. “They moved up the street.”

 

“Oh.”

Lexa turns to leave again, when Clarke says, “I hung out with Raven the other night.”

 

Lexa pauses with a hand on the doorhandle, her heart pumping blood fast and hard through her chest. She moves to look at Clarke, slowly. She’s starting to feel dizzy from turning back and forth so much.

 

“How was that?”

 

Clarke chuckles, starts unwrapping the sandwich in front of her. Lexa stays standing near the doorway, half in, half out, waiting for Clarke to give her some indication of what she wants Lexa to do.

 

“It was fine. I think she’s still a little mad I’m dating her ex.”

 

She knows it’s premature, but a flood of relief rushes through Lexa. Maybe their friendship isn’t unsalvageable after all. “You’re dating Finn?”

 

Clarke nods, motions to the seat in front of her, and Lexa tries not to rush when she moves to sit down. “Yeah. We got close when I moved back to DC, then we started dating.” She picks at a jalapeno, dropping it into the wrapper. Clarke never was much one for spiciness. “She said we had her blessing, but she’s been weird about it since.”

 

Lexa nods, pulls her own sandwich out of the bag and its wrapping. “Well, Raven’s always been the jealous type. Do you remember how she acted when we talked about moving in together?”

 

Clarke nods and laughs and takes a bite of her sandwich. She moans. “Oh, my god. This is _amazing._ ”

 

Lexa colors a bit, but manages to just nod while keeping her head down to hide it. “Yeah, still as good as ever,” she agrees.

 

Clarke chews for a bit, leaving them in silence. Lexa thinks maybe she should say more, but she’s afraid that anything more might start a fight so instead she takes another bite herself.

 

“Lexa.” Clarke says, and Lexa’s head snaps up. She’s ready for a fight again, ready for anything. Frightened as all hell that she’ll have to defend herself yet again because she’s so damn tired. “If you ever hurt me again….” Her voice trails off, but there’s something deeply vulnerable in her face that Lexa can’t explain. Maybe it’s the eyes, or the set of her mouth, or the slight tremble in her hands. Whatever it is, Lexa feels immediately protective.

 

She sets her own sandwich down and moves around to stand in front of Clarke, who swivels in her office chair to look at her, gaze wide and wary. And then Lexa does something she never thought she’d do for anyone—it’s so instinctive, so _right,_ she doesn’t even think about it before she does it. She drops to one knee, takes one of Clarke’s hands in her own. She’s frightened, and Clarke clearly is, too. It’s written all over her face. She’s still a bit closed off, a bit apprehensive in the way she pulls away. But her hand remains in Lexa’s despite her inclination to flinch away.

 

“Clarke Griffin.” Lexa says, uncharacteristically unsure of what she’s going to say or why yet simultaneously unable to stop the words from tumbling out of her mouth, “I promise I will never do anything to hurt you ever again.”

 

They look deeply into each other’s eyes for what feels like an eternity, a question in Clarke’s gaze and what Lexa hopes is an answer in hers. She stays unwavering and hopes that’s enough, though she can feel heat rising in her palms. Something shifts in Clarke’s eyes, from hard and unyielding to softer, to acceptance. She swallows hard. “Go sit, Lexa.” She says, but her voice is trembling and so is her hand.

 

Lexa sits, and Clarke goes back to her sandwich. She tries to act cool, but Lexa can see the quiver in her hand is still there when she picks it back up. She clears her throat, keeps speaking casually as if the past minute hadn’t happened. “Finn’s mad at me, cause he thinks I’m too involved with you.”

 

Lexa fakes a smile, still half-feeling like she’s just proposed, and nods. “Are you?” It’s an absurd moment—one second she’s on her knees with Clarke’s hand in hers, and the next they’re talking about her boyfriend.

 

Clarke takes a bite of her sandwich, chews, drops her eyes to the desk. “No.”

 

Lexa doesn’t say anything, just keeps eating. Though she’s suddenly not feeling all that hungry. She wraps her sandwich back up and stands. “I should get going.”

 

Clarke smiles, and stands out of politeness. “Yeah. Sure. Thanks for the sandwich.”

 

“Anytime.” Lexa makes it to the door before she stops and turns back to Clarke one final time, who has just sat back down in her chair. “Hey, Oasis is out of town for a job, and Sienne has been whining about needing a break so I was gonna take Zoran and Tris and this other kid Aiden to the zoo so they can all have a mommy night.” She shrugs as casually as she knows how given the circumstances, and smiles (though she knows it’s lopsided and awkard as all hell). “Wanna come?”

 

Clarke chews on her lip for a second, fiddles with the sandwich wrapper in front of her. “Yeah. Sure.”

 

Relief floods Lexa and her smile becomes genuine for the first time in a long time. “Great. Hopefully it rains and we get a discount.”

 

The last thing Lexa sees of Clarke is her rolling her eyes with a grin stretching across her face.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this quickly cause it wouldn't get out of my head. lemme know what you think/if it's worth continuing it?


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